


Nocturnal Lore

by Fallowsthorn



Series: Book of Sanguine [5]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Accidental Orgasm, Blow Jobs, Coming In Pants, Crack Treated Seriously, Deepthroating, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, First Time Blow Jobs, Fluff, Humor, Intergluteal Sex, M/M, Magic Used as a Sex Toy, Making Out, Masturbation, Micropenis, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Mutual Masturbation, Premature Ejaculation, Sanguine's Particular Brand of Sexual Ethics, Semi-Public Sex, Sleepy Sex, Teasing, Truth or Dare, Voyeurism, body image issues, brief humiliation, man this looks like total fucking nonsense, sex comedy, sexy story time?, the power fantasy of being able to fix everyone else's problems
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2020-10-05 03:37:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20482220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fallowsthorn/pseuds/Fallowsthorn
Summary: Sanguine runs the Thieves' Guild questline... straight into the ground.Or, a bored sex god is probably not anyone's first choice to turn the Guild's two-decade streak of bad luck around, but here we fuckin' are!





	1. Outsider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drahff (technically a canon character but almost certainly one you don't remember) is a Breton here rather than a Nord because a) I forgot to look it up and b) I was getting tired of writing "the Nord did this-or-that" all the time. Variety is the spice of humans.
> 
> This feels like it's missing something but I don't know what so at this point fuck it, I'm posting it and hopefully the rest will make up the difference later.

Sanguine mentally flicked through his options. Bunch of Windhelm kids about to take too much skooma... no, boring. Thalmor guard hoping no one heard her masturbating... eh, not much he could do with that one, and he was in the mood for something more involved. Idly, he considered trying to get a cult up and running in Skyrim. Sounded like too much work, but maybe he could get someone else to do most of it. There had to be some industrious perverts running around somewhere.

Riften. Now there was a city that attracted trouble and fun in equal measure. Sanguine grinned and materialized out of sight, picking a form more or less at random. Four limbs and a head in the usual places, no tail, dick and balls, tall-ish, probably not a Nord because even for Riften it was fucking cold. Rather than give himself a coat, he simply stopped paying attention to the temperature. Much better.

Less than five minutes of loitering in the marketplace later, a red-haired Nord sidled up to him and spoke in an undertone. "That's a nice kit you've got on, lad. Any of it yours?"

Ding ding ding, he had a winner. Sanguine turned and sized him up. Whoever this was, he looked like he could also have his pick of other people's clothes one way or the other, but his lines needed serious work. "What?"

The Nord kept watching the thin crowd as he leaned on the low stone wall next to Sanguine. "I mean, you've never done an honest day's work for any of that gold, have you?"

Well, technically, no. The body he was wearing had belonged to a follower of his who was now long dead; Sanguine had enough of them that he used them at random rather than bother crafting new disguises. This one had fairly expensive-looking clothes and an ebony dagger that Sanguine, on a whim, upgraded to Daedric, mostly because it was funny.

"Let's say I haven't," he said, instead of explaining any of that. "What did you have in mind?"

The Nord smirked. "I've got a bit of an errand to perform, but I need an extra pair of hands... and in my line of work, extra hands are well-paid."

Sanguine leered. "Kinky. I approve."

Rather than the laugh he'd been hoping for, this got him a sidelong, mildly confused look. "Wha—no. Not that line of work, lad." His gaze did flick over Sanguine, though, just for a moment. "I need someone to liberate a ring from Madesi's strongbox—that's the Argonian, there—and plant it on Brand-Shei, the dark elf. Can't do it myself because they're all watching me, but I can create a distraction and give you an opening. You do well, maybe we'll see about any more money coming your way. Are you up for it?"

Sanguine had, up until this point, been fully expecting the conversation to end on some variation of, "Let's you and me get a room at the inn," and so was caught entirely off guard by... whatever this was. An invitation to petty larceny? Hold on, wasn't the Thieves' Guild based out of Riften? What could possibly have them so hard up that they'd resorted to asking random strangers to be accomplices? What on Nirn was Nocturnal doing, twiddling her thumbs?

On the other hand, well. He'd been looking for trouble or fun, and this seemed like both. It also promised, if Sanguine played his cards right, to be absolutely _hilarious._

"Sure," he said. "Leave it to me."

He intended to do it the hard way, without cheating, which resolution lasted all of a minute and a half, until he came up against the strongbox lock and decided fuck it, the hard way was boring. He dumped the contents of the strongbox out in the little cubby so it'd be obvious it'd been ransacked, moved the ring to Brand-Shei's pocket, and then drifted near the elf so the Nord would know it was done. Sanguine kind of wanted to hang around and watch the commotion, but the mastermind beckoned him away and they both slipped off down the stairs to the canal and away from the guards.

"Well done, lad."

Sanguine grinned. It wasn't really his thing, but it was fun, and he wasn't going to turn down free praise from attractive men. "So what's next?"

The attractive man in question laughed quietly. "That eager, are you? Name's Brynjolf."

Sanguine gave his best roguish smile. "Call me Sam."

Brynjolf raised an eyebrow. "Not exactly a traditional Dunmer name, is it?"

Fuck, he should've looked closer at his body, uh. "It's a nickname." Which was actually true, come to think of it. Sort of. "What were you saying about if our little scheme went smoothly?"

Brynjolf's casual air faded as he looked Sanguine up and down. "Yeah," he mused. "I think you might be just what we need. How well d'you know Riften? You know the Ratway?" Sanguine nodded. "You'll find our headquarters down there. Consider finding the place your initiation test."

Sanguine gave him a look. "Wasn't that bit with the ring enough for you?"

Brynjolf laughed and clapped Sanguine on the shoulder. "Don't get me wrong, it was a good start. We need to know you've got what it takes to keep going. When you get to the Flagon, ask for me."

"You're not coming with?" Not that Sanguine needed the help, but he'd been hoping he could seduce Brynjolf into a dark corner somewhere along the way and maybe suck him off. The man was either an amazingly good tease or a frustratingly horrible one.

Sadly, he shook his head. "It wouldn't be much of a test if I held your hand the whole way, would it? And I need an alibi for the next little while. I'll meet you later, lad. Good luck." And he was gone back up the stairs before Sanguine could flirt with him more blatantly.

Oh, well. Wouldn't be his last chance. On to the Flagon.

About twenty-five feet into the Ratway, which was certainly damp and poorly-lit but didn’t smell nearly as bad as its architecture implied it should, Sanguine slowed to a stop. Ahead, he could hear two men arguing about, what else, the Thieves' Guild and some scheme they were running. Or, from the sound of it, trying to run, and failing miserably at. One of them abruptly hushed the other and told him to "get ready."

Sanguine considered his options. Obviously it was a trap, but the question was, what kind of trap? If they were just going to attack him immediately, that was boring and disappointing and Sanguine didn’t want to deal with it. If it was a shakedown, it would be a prime opportunity to fuck with them for shits and giggles. Again, he wondered what was up with the Thieves' Guild, since these two clearly weren’t part of it but were apparently operating on their doorstep with impunity.

Eventually he decided, eh, the worst they could do was send him back to Oblivion, and cheerfully strutted around the corner, straight into the two arguers. They were waiting, blocking the hallway, and eyed Sanguine up with identical wolfish grins. He looked back, though he was aware they probably weren't looking for the same things.

"Lookie here," the one on the left said. A Breton, possibly; it was hard to tell. "Someone got himself lost in the bad part of town, did he?"

"Think he did," said the other one. He had to be a Nord, with that height and accent. "You know, Drahff, I'm feeling civic-minded today. I think we should show this gentleman the way out before something bad happens to him."

Sanguine licked his lips. Definitely the right decision. "What if that's what I came looking for?" he purred.

Both bandits blinked at him, thrown by the sudden deviation from the script. The Breton, Drahff, recovered first, for a given value of "recovered." "You... came looking to get mugged?"

"Well, not in so many words," Sanguine allowed. "But hey, if that's what gets you going...."

Now they were really confused. This was priceless. He almost wondered if they'd just let him walk past them while they tried to figure out what was going on, but not enough to try it.

The Nord, apparently quicker on the uptake for all that he looked like the brawn of the operation, slowly furrowed his brow at Sanguine. "Are you...."

"What?" Drahff said, when the other man didn’t finish the question. "Spit it out."

The Nord looked uncertain. "I just... you know those, uh... plays Haelga used to do?"

Evidently, no, because Drahff just looked impatient, but Sanguine let his grin widen. He could guess what kind of "plays" the Nord was thinking of, and they generally didn’t rely on exquisite acting. "Oh, no," he said, not bothering to sound even slightly dismayed, "I don't have any money."

Drahff rolled his eyes. "Hewnon, would you just kill him already?" Hewnon didn’t move. "Hewnon?"

"I... don't think he's joking," Hewnon said.

Drahff sighed. "Look, come here a second." He pointed at Sanguine. "You, stay there." Sanguine waved cheerily as Drahff led Hewnon a few feet away. "Listen," he said in an undertone, "he's obviously lying. Look how he's dressed."

That was a good point, actually. It was unfortunate they'd already noticed his clothes, or he could have changed them into something more generic and blamed the low lighting. "If it helps, these aren't mine," Sanguine said, pitching his voice as though they couldn't hear him easily from twice the distance. "They were just convenient."

"You stole them?" Hewnon said, nonplussed.

Sanguine shrugged. "Manner of speaking."

Drahff pinched the bridge of his nose. "Look," he said, exasperated, "give us whatever you've got on you, or we'll kill you and take it anyway. Got it?"

Sanguine pretended to think it over, and as an afterthought vanished the clearly-expensive dagger before they could see it on his belt. "I have a counteroffer," he said. "I give you both the best damn blowjobs you've ever had in your life, and I don’t tell the Thieves' Guild about your little racket, and you can just owe me a favor. Don't worry, nothing too... big or hard."

They stared at him.

"You're right, that was awful, usually I can come up with better puns. Or worse, depending on your perspective."

Drahff rubbed a hand over his face. He looked very tired.

"Wouldn't be that hard," Hewnon said. Drahff looked at him like he'd gone insane.

Got him. "What wouldn’t?" Sanguine drawled.

Hewnon snorted. "To give him the best blowjob of his life. It'd be the first one."

Sanguine looked back at Drahff, delighted. "You're a virgin?"

Drahff looked about ready to murder Hewnon. "No!"

Sanguine looked back at Hewnon, who had leaned his mace up against the wall, folded his arms, and was grinning at the funniest thing he'd seen all day, or possibly all year. He caught Sanguine’s look and nodded exaggeratedly.

"'tween the two of you, you coulda fixed that," Sanguine said.

Hewnon shrugged. "Never asked."

Drahff made an inarticulate noise that promised pain in Hewnon's near future. "Listen, whoever you are," he said through gritted teeth.

Sanguine eyed him. "You know, that explains a lot? C'mere." He knelt and looked up invitingly.

"I... wh...." Drahff looked like someone had hit him over the head with Hewnon's mace. "You _meant it?"_

"Wouldn't've offered if I didn't," Sanguine said easily.

Hewnon nudged Drahff forward. "Go on," he said, when Drahff looked at him wildly. "Feels good. If you don’t like it I'll kill him for you."

Drahff took one uncertain step forward, then another, until he was standing in front of Sanguine. "I've never...." he said, like this was news.

"Relax," Sanguine murmured. He picked apart the tie on Drahff's threadbare pants and eased them down, gratified to see Drahff was already starting to plump up. "Let your good friend Sam take care of you."

Drahff sucked in a breath as Sanguine’s mouth engulfed him. "Oh," he said, and reached out blindly in Hewnon's direction. "Oh, that's...."

Hewnon came closer to let Drahff brace himself on his shoulder. "I know," he said, voice throaty and eyes dark.

Sanguine gave Drahff a moment to adjust, then gently swallowed. Drahff whimpered, very quietly, like he was afraid if he was any louder some spell would be broken. Sanguine chuckled low in his throat and took him down deeper. He went slow at first, partly to tease, mostly because Drahff was standing largely under his own power and falling on your ass in a sewer was generally not considered a turn-on. He closed his eyes and hummed. There was something uniquely pleasant about sucking cock with neither participant moving much. Almost... meditative.

He bobbed his head a few inches. Sure, he could tease, but overdoing it seemed a little mean, and he didn't want to actually overwhelm him. Sanguine aimed for that shallow slope of pleasure, neither slow nor fast, just building and building and building until the whole world was bliss.

Drahff's breathing hitched rhythmically as he panted. He clung to Hewnon's shoulder with both hands to stay upright, and couldn't stop arching forward even though he was trying to keep his hips still. Sanguine just kept at that same steady spiral, until Drahff started to rise up on his toes.

Hewnon nudged him. "Hey," he said. "Tell him when you're getting close."

Drahff opened his eyes. "Huh—uh, what, ah—"

"'s polite."

"I'm—yes," Drahff said, like it had been dragged out of him and he only half-understood what was coming out of his mouth. "I'm going—please—"

Sanguine gave him an A for effort, even though Drahff had said it to Hewnon and had basically failed to actually communicate anything. He made an "Mm-hmm," noise to show he'd heard, but didn’t let up. He also didn’t speed up, just continued the insistent, slow torture, until Drahff made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sob and Sanguine took pity on him and sucked harder and deeper than he had been, enough to send Drahff into orgasm. The angle made it hard to see, but he was pretty sure Drahff turned his face into Hewnon's shoulder as he came.

He eased back when Drahff started to soften in his mouth, and was pleasantly surprised by the last few drops of semen drooling from the tip that hadn't quite made it all the way out. He swiped his tongue over the slit to clean up, trying to be gentle. Drahff still hissed softly.

Sanguine sat back on his heels to let Drahff catch his breath. He laid a hand on the man's thigh. "Good?"

Drahff nodded tiredly. "How did you do that?" he asked vaguely.

Sanguine grinned. "Practice. You wanna let your buddy have a turn?"

Drahff blinked at him for a moment, then abruptly seemed to remember Hewnon, who was being exceedingly patient if you asked Sanguine. He wondered if he could get these guys to rough him up, take what they wanted instead of being so nice about it. Maybe some other time. Maybe he could get Brynjolf in on it.

Drahff looked at Hewnon like he'd been caught. "Er, sorry, I, ah. Sorry." He hastily detached himself.

Hewnon didn’t stop him from moving away, but he did take his time looking him over, making it clear he had no objections. "Don't be," he said. "You were a sight." Drahff inhaled sharply.

Sanguine grabbed Hewnon's hips and hauled him into place. "Have your little come-to-Mara moment later. How does this come off?" Hewnon, unlike Drahff, was wearing what could loosely be called armor, though it was the miscellaneous metal-and-leather kilt sort of thing that spoke of not enough skill to make greaves and not enough money to buy them from someone else. Better than nothing, but not by much. Hewnon's erection made the front of it rise slightly, which was impressive when you considered how heavy it probably was.

It turned out that it just tied around Hewnon's waist, which meant that when Sanguine got it off him, he was entirely naked aside from his boots. Sanguine took a moment to stare appreciatively. Nords were big _everywhere._ He'd be surprised if he could cover all of Hewnon's cock with both fists.

Hewnon misinterpreted the look and shuffled awkwardly. "Ah... you don't have to, y'know, use your mouth, I know it's...."

"Are you kidding me come here," Sanguine said.

"I don't want to choke you," Hewnon said carefully.

Sanguine nuzzled at the base of Hewnon's blood-heavy cock. It was so big that, fully erect, it slanted down under its own weight. He shoved his tongue into the crease underneath, tasting sweat and musk, then leaned back and smirked. "Why not?"

Hewnon gave him a long look. "Give me your hands." Sanguine did. Hewnon set one on either of his thighs, high enough not to be uncomfortable but low enough that Sanguine had no leverage. "You let go, I let go. Got it?"

Sanguine’s eyes widened. _"Yes."_ Oh, this was going to be good. Virgins were cute and fun to tempt, but the ones with experience, who knew what they liked and how they liked it, they were in a class all their own.

"Good," Hewnon said, but he kept his hands over Sanguine's. "Show me how much you can take on your own."

Since both of them were looking forward to Hewnon's hands on Sanguine's head, and he visibly hadn't had a problem with Drahff, the answer couldn't be a convenient "yes" or "no." Sanguine spent about a second considering what a good middle ground was before deciding that was too much thinking. The body had a gag reflex, right? Probably. He'd just go with whatever that was.

He leaned forward slowly, keeping his eyes on Hewnon's as he deliberately let his cock bump against his face. Precome smeared across his lower lip towards the corner of his mouth. Hewnon exhaled heavily but tightened his grip on Sanguine's hands instead of taking control. Sanguine pressed a kiss to flushed skin as a reward, then without further prompting took Hewnon in his mouth.

He made it about a handspan before the intrusion into his throat made him splutter and pull back automatically. So, yes, whoever his body had been had a gag reflex, and had never trained themselves out of it. Sanguine toned it down from "inconvenient and slightly alarming" to "sexy."

"You didn't have that much trouble with Drahff," Hewnon said.

"You're thicker," Sanguine said, which was true. "I thought I heard you say something about choking me."

Hewnon paused. "So I did." He gave Sanguine another long look and reached forward to cradle his jaw and the back of his skull. Sanguine melted a little at the fingers in his hair. "You let go, I let go," he repeated. Sanguine nodded and opened his mouth.

Hewnon shoved in abruptly. Sanguine gagged and choked, but he didn’t let go of Hewnon's thighs, and Hewnon didn’t let go of his head, just held him down for several long seconds before pulling him off roughly and letting him breathe. He coughed, and Hewnon watched him carefully.

"Just so you know," Sanguine said, slightly hoarse, "I can hold my breath for a really long time. And it's easier when you put me where you want me."

"Is it," Hewnon murmured.

"Yeah, so quit sta—"

Hewnon growled. He forced Sanguine's head back down and Sanguine took him gamely, feeling his throat spasm around the sudden intrusion. He put up a token struggle for a couple seconds and then relaxed completely into Hewnon's hold, letting him use his mouth however he liked. Drahff had wanted a person. Hewnon wanted a toy, and Sanguine was happy to oblige.

"Um, is that... is he okay?" Drahff said. Sanguine heard him as though from a distance. He hummed affirmatively, and Hewnon groaned at the vibration. After a moment, Drahff continued. "How does it... I mean, how deep does...."

Hewnon pulled Sanguine’s head away so he could think. Sanguine, belatedly, remembered he was supposed to need to breathe, and tried to do so without being too obvious about the fact that he hadn't been.

"Come here," Hewnon said. He sounded a bit out of breath himself.

"Um," said Drahff.

"I want to show you something. Come here." Drahff approached hesitantly. "Put your hand on his throat."

Sanguine felt two fingers on the side of his neck, as though Drahff was trying to take his pulse. He huffed, and Hewnon snorted. "No. Like this." He moved Drahff's hand so his palm covered Sanguine's trachea and his fingers and thumb curled loosely around either side. Sanguine swallowed reflexively, and Drahff's hand twitched at the movement.

"Keep it there." Hewnon pulled Sanguine closer slowly, so as not to jostle the three of them. Sanguine got to watch Drahff's eyes go wide in something almost like awe.

"Oh," he breathed, in nearly the same tone of voice he'd used when Sanguine first got his mouth on him. "I can feel...." He crouched at Sanguine's side so he could reach more easily without getting in Hewnon's way.

Hewnon went back to fucking Sanguine’s mouth, but at a more controlled pace. Every time Drahff felt Hewnon's cock plunge back into Sanguine's throat, his breathing hitched, and every time he gasped, Hewnon's cock twitched and his grip got tighter. Sanguine worked his throat as best he could, loving the dynamic. It was a shame Drahff had already come, or Sanguine could have given him a hand. He'd bet money on these two having a thing for each other and not acting on it for some ridiculous reason.

Drahff's hand flexed. Almost certainly unintentionally, but Sanguine moaned loudly before he could apologize for it. He looked at Sanguine, then up at Hewnon. "Can you feel that?" he asked quietly.

Hewnon's eyes were closed and his rhythm was getting irregular as he neared his peak. At the question, he cracked one eye open and attempted a hazy focus. "Feel what?"

"When I—" Drahff said, and squeezed Sanguine’s throat again, more obviously. Hewnon froze and then a strangled cry punched out of him as he came, pinning Sanguine root-deep for a long, suspended moment. He let Sanguine go while his cock was still spurting seed, but Sanguine withdrew as slowly as he could, until Hewnon finally pushed at him, oversensitive. He sat back and let his hands drop, inordinately pleased.

"I guess that's a yes," Drahff said, a tad faintly. His hand was still wrapped loosely around Sanguine’s throat; Sanguine thought he probably hadn’t realized it was still there.

"Actually, no," Hewnon said, once he wasn’t breathing quite so hard. He sounded tired but amused, and leaned against the wall while he retrieved his armor. "Or if I could, I couldn't tell. But the thought of it...."

"I could probably make that happen, if you wanted," Sanguine volunteered. Drahff startled and snatched his hand away from Sanguine’s throat, which was a shame.

"Are you all right?" Hewnon asked him. He seemed rather guilty, which was adorable, but likely not misplaced; if Sanguine had been a mortal, he probably wouldn’t have taken the rough treatment as well.

"Oh, yeah," Sanguine said. He grinned. "Been a while since I got someone to use me like that." Being a Daedric Prince had its perks, but it did make mortals in general a bit wary of displeasing him. Sanguine mostly blamed the other Princes for this, since he considered himself very hard to displease. At least, by the kinds of things most people wanted to do to him.

"Do you want...?" Drahff said. When Sanguine looked over to find him hovering, unsure, he clarified. "Feels a little cruel, leaving you like that." He nodded down at Sanguine's lap, where his leaking erection had turned the front of his expensive trousers into a damp mess.

Sanguine shook his head, still smiling. "You're sweet. No, you'll just have to owe me a favor. I'll probably come to collect pretty soon, I'm not the type to hold it over people's heads. And it won't be anything you really don't want to do."

Drahff looked skeptical, but let it go anyway. Hewnon offered them both a hand up. Drahff took it and stood, but Sanguine grabbed it and Drahff's opposite hand and pressed both their palms to his cheeks. On a whim, he kissed one and then the other before he let them go and got up. They'd have lower inhibitions for the next day or so, but nothing truly bad would come of it.

He waved them toward each other as he walked off. "Go! Talk about your feelings or whatever sappy nonsense! And maybe rethink your setup here, I kind of doubt it usually turns out this good." He waited until he was around the corner, then stopped to adjust his clothes and erection to be more comfortable. Orgasm delay was fun and all, but he did actually have to find the place.

Drahff's voice echoed around the corridor. He was clearly talking to Hewnon and thought Sanguine was long gone. "Did... that just... happen?"

"I think so," Hewnon said, and then something else, lower.

Sanguine smirked and trotted off. He wondered how far they'd get before they remembered that, for all that almost no one came down here, they were technically in public. Then again, they didn’t have anywhere to go that wasn’t, and he really didn't see that stopping them for long. Maybe he'd get lucky and get an eyeful when he came back.


	2. Initiate

The Flagon wasn't hard to find; the Ratway essentially formed a big circle around a cistern that drained to the lake, which explained why the place didn’t smell absolutely foul. The ceiling was high, and as Sanguine compared his mental map, he realized the Flagon must be directly under the marketplace, making the "skylight" that boarded-up well in the center. He had to give them points for sheer audacity.

There was... a bar, sort of, or at least something that looked like it wanted to be a bar when it grew up, with a few people clustered around it, talking. Sanguine marched himself up to them. "Hello! Brynjolf sent me."

All four of them stared at him. The big Nord took a step forward. "Buddy, if you wanna keep your head where it is, you'd better turn around and start walking."

Sanguine grinned. So far this whole being-threatened thing had been working out for him. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, their attention shifted to behind him. He turned to see Brynjolf hurrying into the area with all the tables.

"Sorry, sorry," Brynjolf said. "I'd meant to be here, I did actually send him. He helped me out with Brand-Shei, and _that—" _He dropped a heavy coin purse on the counter. "—is from Bersi Honey-hand, who decided he doesn't want the same thing to happen to him."

The man behind the bar peered at it. "Bryn, he owes us two hundred."

Brynjolf looked annoyed. "I'm aware."

"There can't be more than fifty septims in here!"

"Well, it's more than zero, isn't it?" Brynjolf said, exasperated. "And since that's what we had this morning, I think we'd better take what we can get."

The bartender gave Brynjolf a sympathetic, frustrated look. "This isn't working. We can't keep doing business like this, it's not sustainable! Bringing back a fourth of our cut with the mark still walking around? Fifteen years ago we would have laughed you out of the Guild!"

"Fifteen years ago we had twice as many members and a reputation from here to Winterhold," Brynjolf growled. "And ten years before that we wouldn't even have had to show up in person. Times have changed."

The barman threw up his hands. "That's what I'm saying! You, Vex, Mercer—you need to adapt! You—"

The other three thieves had clearly heard this argument before, because to a one they rolled their eyes and visibly stopped listening. Two of them snagged bottles of mead and wandered over to a table with only an acknowledging glance at Sanguine, and the third, a Redguard woman, beckoned Sanguine to follow her to a hallway at the back of the place.

"I'm Tonilia," she said, business-like. "I'm the Guild's fence, which means I'm the one you go to when you want some expensive trinket to turn into gold with no one else the wiser. I don't do favors and I don't do discounts. And no, I'm not interested in dinner or a roll in the hay or whatever else you're about to suggest."

Sanguine pretended to be hurt. "I hadn't even asked yet!"

Tonilia scoffed. "'Yet.' I'll take you to Mercer, he can decide what to do with you. Vekel and Bryn can go on like that for hours."

Sanguine was tempted to make a crack about stamina, but suspected that in this case, he was not going to catch more flies with honey. Instead he said, "Thanks, then."

She shot him a mildly surprised look, which was weird. Did these people not like each other or what? Actually, that could go a long way towards explaining the general dysfunction.

Tonilia led him through a false panel in the back of a cupboard and down another hallway, into what was more obviously a communal space. Perhaps ten or so people went about their business throughout the cistern, training, cooking, or crafting various things. They went straight for a strong-shouldered man with greying hair who was bent over a desk, writing something.

"Mercer," Tonilia said without preamble. "Brynjolf brought in a stray."

"Then why are you here and not him?" Mercer said, without looking up.

Tonilia rolled her eyes. "Because he's bitching at Vekel again. Do whatever you want with him, he's not my problem." She turned and stalked away.

"Tell him to get his ass over here!" Mercer called after her. She didn't respond but waved one hand to show she'd heard. He sighed heavily and looked to Sanguine. "Ugh. We don't need new recruits fumbling around mucking things up for the rest of us."

Sanguine was only half paying attention. He narrowed his eyes at Mercer. "Something's odd about you," he said. And he couldn't quite tell how or why, which was unusual. "I think I'm going to find out what."

Mercer was _fast._ In less than a second he had Sanguine backed into the wall with a dagger at his throat. "Not if you want your tongue to stay in your head, you won't," he growled.

Sanguine tipped his head back. "Ooh, threats," he murmured. "And I didn't even bring any flowers."

Mercer's lip curled. He searched Sanguine's face for something, then snorted like an ox. "Fine. Here's how it works. You do what I say, when I say, and you walk away rich. You fuck up, you'd better _hope_ all we give you is nothing. No debates, no discussion. Got it?"

"Yes, sir," Sanguine purred.

Mercer let him go with a grimace. "And stop... that." He flicked the dagger at Sanguine.

"You just pointed to all of me," Sanguine said, amused.

Mercer paused. "Yeah." He thought for a moment. "You know what, I might have the perfect job for you. You do it right and I'll consider making you part of the Guild. You get caught, and we've never heard of you, understand?"

"No, yeah, I get the concept there, but I know where your secret hideout is," Sanguine said. "I'm not going to give you up to the guards, but you have to admit that's kind of a liability."

Mercer gave him a look that very clearly said _do you think I'm stupid?_ "Everybody and their aunt knows where we are, it's not exactly hard to figure out. Living in the Ratway isn't illegal, and neither is having friends. On the other hand, we get a raid down here, I'll know exactly who's responsible. Take the job or don't. Either way, keep your mouth shut."

Sanguine shrugged. "I'll take it. What do I do?"

"Goldenglow Estate. You know it?"

No, but he could find out easily. He nodded.

"It's critically important to one of our largest clients. However, the owner has suddenly decided to take matters into his own hands and shut us out. He needs to be taught a lesson. Get in there, burn three of the beehives, clean out his safe, see if you can't figure out what's going on while you're at it. If you can't swing the last part, don't worry about it, it's just a bonus. Don't get killed. Don't get caught. Any questions?"

"Why only three?" Sanguine said.

Mercer folded his arms. "Because I said so. Any _relevant _questions?"

Ah, so that was how this power trip was going to play out. Sanguine had no problem with being a good boy and doing as he was told, as long as he got something out of it in the end, and Mercer seemed like the type to get off on being in control. "So, just to be clear, you don't actually care how I get all that done, just that it happens and nobody can pin it on the Guild?"

Mercer looked mystified for a few seconds before deciding it wasn’t his problem. "Sure, dress in drag and do the hula if that's what it takes, I don't care. Now get out of here, I have work to do."

Sanguine tossed him a lazy salute and sauntered off. On his way out, he ran into Brynjolf, who'd realized his protege was wandering around unsupervised.

"Sorry, lad. Didn't mean to leave you to the slaughterfish. How'd it go with Mercer?" Sanguine rattled off the basic details. Brynjolf frowned, looking troubled. "That's... not how we do things around here. I'll talk to him later. For now, let's get you a set of Guild armor and see what Vex can tell you about the security on the place."

"Isn't the whole point of this that no one knows I'm with you?" Sanguine asked, already following Brynjolf back to the Flagon.

Brynjolf was facing away, but Sanguine would bet his frown deepened. "We don't do probation here. Either you're in or you're out. We certainly don't send our people on jobs and then leave them high and dry if something goes wrong. Mercer's.... Never mind. Here." He ducked into an alcove and retrieved a bundle of leather from a shelf. Sanguine took it from him, not bothering to argue that he wasn't going to use it. He'd put it back before he left.

Vex turned out to be a compact blonde Imperial woman sitting on one of the beds with a frost-enchanted bandage wrapped around her ankle. She looked up at Brynjolf's approach, and narrowed her eyes when she saw Sanguine. "Who's this?"

"Our new recruit. Sam, this is Vex. Best damn infiltrator the Guild's got. Vex, mind telling Sam what you know about Goldenglow?"

"Flattery will get you nowhere," Vex grumbled, but she sounded pleased. "Aringoth definitely knows we're coming for him. Has to be eight sellswords around the place, probably more inside. Sewer tunnel on the north side of the island was unguarded, probably isn't anymore but that's how Delvin and I got in. Didn't get halfway to the house before we got spotted. Landed wrong while we were running." She indicated her ankle. "Why?" She looked between Brynjolf and Sanguine. "No. No! That's a terrible idea! He's greener than a seasick Argonian!"

Brynjolf held his hands up in surrender. "I know, lass. Wasn't me who put him on the job."

Vex's mouth tightened. "What is Mercer _thinking?"_

"Probably that he wants to get rid of me," Sanguine said.

Vex eyed him. "Well, this'll do it," she said bluntly. "Way our luck is going, you'll drown in the lake."

"Vex," Brynjolf said, disapproving.

"It's true," Vex snapped at him, then turned back to Sanguine. "Listen, I don't know why you joined, but if Mercer's hard up enough to send a complete rookie on a job like Goldenglow, you should get out while you still can."

"Well, that's dire," Sanguine said. "Can you tell me anything about Aringoth? I'm not planning on breaking and entering."

Vex and Brynjolf exchanged a look. "What are you planning on?" Brynjolf asked.

Sanguine grinned. "I'm going to walk right up to the front gate and they're going to let me in."

Vex snorted. "You know, you might be stupid, but I gotta admire that kind of crazy. Like watching a cart go off a cliff. Oblivion, if you think you can make that work I'm not going to stop you."

"Do you know something we don't, lad?" Brynjolf asked.

Sanguine winked at him. "I heard from a discreet friend that he and I have some... mutual interests."

Vex got it, and her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. Brynjolf didn't, and just looked blank. "...Which are?"

"No idea," Sanguine announced cheerfully. "But everybody's got something."

Vex's surprise had faded to a mixture of unease and awkward sympathy. "You—shouldn't have to do that," she said. "Mercer didn't give you a deadline, did he? Just lay low for a few days, I can—at least train you a little."

"You're sweet," Sanguine told her. "Trust me, I have a lot of practice at this."

The sympathy turned to pity, poorly-hidden. "Just because you've had to do it before doesn't mean you should have to do it again."

Brynjolf, who still hadn't caught on, was looking at Vex like she'd lost her mind. "Am I missing something? Because offering to fence for someone on the outs with the Thieves' Guild is a fantastic in from where I'm standing."

Sanguine bit his lip hard so he wouldn't laugh. "Yeah, Vex," he said, before giving up completely on keeping a straight face. "What did you think I meant?"

Vex looked incredibly annoyed at both of them. "Bryn, that's not—he's going to sleep with Aringoth. That's his genius plan. What are you going to do if he's into torturing people?"

_Enjoy it,_ was Sanguine's first answer, but it probably wasn't the right one, not while he was pretending to be a mortal for whom all of these concerns were reasonable. "Wait 'til we're alone and hit him over the head," he said instead. "Trust me, I'm not doing it this way because I think I have to. I'm doing it 'cause it's a lot easier than the alternatives and I stand a good chance of having fun too."

Vex threw up her hands. "Right, well, I tried," she said. "Just don't tell Sapphire."

"Um," said Brynjolf, who still looked a little adrift. "Er—wait—lad, we really don't do things that way—"

"I know," Sanguine told him, trying to be gentle but really, this was too much fun. He leaned forward and kissed Brynjolf lightly on the cheek. "But I do." He walked away before Brynjolf could muster up a reaction, Vex cackling behind him.

"Hey!" she called. "Do that to Delvin sometime, see how he likes it when the shoe's on the other foot!"

"I will if he flirts as much as Brynjolf does!" he called back, loudly enough for the entire room to hear. A pair of thieves on the other side of the room looked up, grinning like sabrecats. Sanguine regretted that he couldn't stick around to watch what was almost certainly going to be the teasing of the century, but he'd have to content himself with Brynjolf's face, so red it nearly matched his hair. He had a job to do, after all.

* * *

"Is Aringoth in?" Sanguine asked, when he finally just teleported himself to Goldenglow after failing to find it for ten minutes. (In his defense, it was in the middle of the lake, which was not the usual location for a house, so there.)

"D'you have an appointment," the gate guard droned. She looked objectively bored out of her skull.

Sanguine fidgeted, pretending to be shy, and leaned closer as though he didn't want anyone to overhear. "He'll want to see me, but it's... not for the sort of thing you put on a calendar, if you understand me."

The guard's expression didn’t change. "No appointment, no entry."

Sanguine glanced away, impatient and ashamed. He was rather proud of his acting skills. "I just... will you go and ask him? Tell him that a mutual friend of ours let me know about our shared interests."

"Ugh," the guard said, but turned and hollered over her shoulder, "Hana! Keep an eye on the greyskin! I need to check something with the boss."

Another mercenary, presumably Hana, came over while the first one was away from her post. Sanguine was just thinking of what he could get up to with eight extremely bored people at loose ends when the gate guard came back, looking surprised and somewhat skeptical.

"What do you know," she said. "All right, this road will take you up to the front of the house. He's waiting for you just inside. We have people on both floors, so don't even think about any funny business."

"No, ma'am," Sanguine said. Funny business. She had no idea.

Aringoth, by contrast, seemed to be on the verge of panic, as well as chronically sleep-deprived. He grabbed Sanguine’s wrist as soon as he walked into the house. "What did she tell you?" he said tightly.

"The guard?" Sanguine asked.

Aringoth shook his head impatiently. "No, not her. Our—" He stepped closer and lowered his voice. _"—mutual friend."_

"Ah," Sanguine said. "Do you really want to have this conversation in the hallway?"

Aringoth looked around, flushed even though no one else was visible, and yanked Sanguine toward the back of the house. He only released him once the door to his rooms was closed and locked behind them. _"What did she tell you,"_ he gritted out.

Here was the tricky part. "Nothing," Sanguine admitted. "I don't even know who you're talking about. But I want to help."

Aringoth's shoulders had slumped in relief, but now they crept back up as he stared at Sanguine suspiciously. "What? Why? What do you think I need help with?"

Sanguine took a half-step closer, reassured when Aringoth didn’t back away. "I think you're lonely," he said soothingly. "I think there's something very important to you that you've kept hidden for a long time, and I think you need someone to tell you it's all right. Someone who doesn't have anything to gain from lying to you."

Aringoth stared at Sanguine. He tensed and twitched like a too-ready horse, and in his eyes was a painful mixture of fear and starved hope. He swallowed hard and wet his lips. "H-how can I trust you?" he said, and the look on his face said he knew how plaintive it had sounded, but he couldn't do anything to change that. "I don't know you. You could tell everyone. You could be from the Thieves' Guild."

"I'm here because I want to be," Sanguine said. He took another step closer and kept his voice low and calm. "You're right, you don't know me, but neither does anyone in Riften. You wouldn't believe me if I told you Maven Black-Briar sometimes feels guilty about her connections with the Guild, would you?"

Aringoth snorted before he could stop himself. "No. To put it mildly."

"Well, there you go." Another step, and he held out one hand between them, palm up. "I won't tell anyone in Riften. I promise."

"You'll laugh," Aringoth said, too numb to be miserable. He stared at Sanguine's hand like Sanguine was holding a dagger. "If you don’t know—if she didn't tell you. You'll realize how worthless—never mind, forget I said that."

Sanguine was, at this point, both extremely confused and a little broken-hearted. He'd been expecting something mildly kinky that Aringoth didn’t get to indulge in a lot, but the mer looked devastated and they had barely touched. Aringoth had never even heard of him an hour ago. What the fuck was going on?

"I won't," he said softly. He came closer, slowly so Aringoth could easily avoid him if he wished, and settled his hand on the mer's waist. "You don't have to tell me now. What would you do, if I knew, and I still wanted you?"

Aringoth's eyes darted down to Sanguine’s lips, and then he colored and turned his head away. "I'm sorry."

Sanguine set his other hand on Aringoth's cheek. "Would you kiss me?" he asked gently. "Would you like me to kiss you?"

Aringoth didn’t look up or say anything, but he nodded once, shortly. Sanguine tipped his head up and pressed their closed lips together.

For someone so reluctant, Aringoth was wonderfully responsive. He melted into the kiss, chaste as it was, and leaned heavily on Sanguine, though he was careful that they didn't touch below the waist. Sanguine swiped his tongue across Aringoth's lower lip, pleased with the soft gasp this produced. He curled his hand around the back of Aringoth's neck, and Aringoth shivered and went still.

Sanguine pulled back. "Okay?"

Aringoth kept his eyes closed. He looked nearly drugged. "Yes," he whispered. "I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that."

Aringoth shook his head. "I should be. I don't want to disappoint you." He opened his eyes and attempted a weak smile. "I'm not very good with my mouth, but I could...?" He slid one hand down Sanguine’s side, then up under the hem of his shirt to make it clear what he meant. "No reason you shouldn't get what you want."

Sanguine kissed him again, firmer this time. "I want you."

Aringoth straightened up and leaned back again, frowning, but he didn’t look alarmed, just confused. "Why?" he asked. "We don't know anything about each other. How did you even know I'm—well."

"I don't like shame," Sanguine said easily. "Most people have something they're afraid of wanting. Sometimes for good reason, sometimes no one would really care. Sometimes they know they have nothing to worry about, but they can't stop themselves. I—like being someone who will accept them. Accept it for them, if they can't. Does that answer your question?"

"Sounds like some of the Dibellan sermons," Aringoth said. "But I don't think they have male priests, do they?"

"Not quite, no," Sanguine said. "But something like that. You can trust me." He lifted his hand to brush his thumb over Aringoth's cheekbone. "Would you like an engraved invitation?"

Aringoth's lips twitched. "I don't think I can say it," he confessed. "We don't have to... but please don't leave right away. I don't think I could take someone else finding out, and then not knowing where they are."

"I won't," Sanguine promised again. He tugged Aringoth backward to the bed, but didn’t pull him into it, instead kissing him languidly while he waited for Aringoth to decide. Aringoth shuddered, then in one swift movement grabbed Sanguine’s hand and shoved it between his legs. He rested his forehead on Sanguine's shoulder while he waited for him to figure it out.

Sanguine wasn’t immediately sure what he was supposed to be realizing. He could feel testicles, warm and heavy in his hand, so Aringoth probably wasn't cross-gender, which had been his first guess, for all that he was under the vague impression Y'ffre or Kynareth or somebody took care of that for Bosmer. He felt around a little, prompting a stifled moan, until it became clear that Aringoth's fully erect cock was small enough to fit in Sanguine’s palm. He made a soft noise and Aringoth moaned again, unhappily this time, and tried to retreat.

Sanguine didn’t let him. "I'll go if you want me to," he murmured in Aringoth's ear, "but I don't think you want me to." He squeezed slightly for punctuation.

"No," Aringoth agreed, breathless. "But—"

"I bet I could make you come just like this," Sanguine said lowly. Aringoth inhaled sharply. "With just my hand on you and my voice in your ear. Without a single button undone. You're so eager, so ready for me. Fucking gorgeous. Wish I'd come here years ago."

"Don't lie," Aringoth said. His eyes were shut again, and his voice was thick and tight.

"I'm not," Sanguine said against his skin. He shifted so his own erection pressed into Aringoth's hip. "See? That's all you."

Aringoth just pressed his face into Sanguine's neck and breathed for a long moment. At last he said, "I don't want to—be on the bottom."

"Then we won't do that," Sanguine said. "What do you want?"

Another pause, this one more wry than stunned. "I'm not actually sure," Aringoth admitted, not without amusement. "I don't know what's normal."

"Fuck normal," Sanguine declared. "How about I just keep going and you can tell me if you have any great ideas?"

"Okay," Aringoth said, faintly strangled. "Would—I mean, kiss me again, please."

"Gladly," Sanguine purred, and did. This time he deepened the kiss almost immediately and used Aringoth's pliancy to maneuver him onto his back on the bed. Sanguine straddled him on his knees, bracing himself with both arms so he could nestle their hips together. Aringoth jolted against him, then groaned and arched his back more deliberately. Sanguine rewarded him for it with a long, slow slide that left him mouthing at Aringoth's neck.

"I want to see," he said.

Aringoth tensed, then forced himself to relax. "You first." His hands were already fumbling with Sanguine’s belt.

Sanguine laughed and sat up. "You drive a hard bargain." He pulled his short tunic and undershirt over his head and tossed them aside, then rose up on his knees to undo his belt and pants. Aringoth watched him, rapt. Sanguine preened a little. It was always nice to be appreciated. He stood up to rid himself of the rest of his clothes quickly, then returned to his rightful place. "Your turn. Unless you want help with that?"

Aringoth huffed, pretending offense. His outfit was lighter than Sanguine's and he stripped his shirt off easily, then hesitated at the leather lacing on his pants. Sanguine could guess why. "Put your hands on mine," he suggested. Aringoth looked confused, but covered Sanguine's hands with his own, palms down. He did put it together when Sanguine moved to continue undressing him. He squeezed reflexively, and Sanguine stopped, patient, until Aringoth relaxed again and nodded at him to continue.

Sanguine kept his movements slow and predictable. Aringoth's breathing sped up as Sanguine tugged his pants and underwear off, but he didn’t stop him.

"Oh," Sanguine breathed, once he'd gotten his first good look. "Beautiful." Aringoth's cock was perhaps a bit longer than the first bone of Sanguine’s thumb, and was a surprisingly lovely shade of dusky gold. His erection had pulled the skin of his balls taut so they rose slightly, or possibly, Sanguine conceded, he was just that wound up. He licked his lips, wanting a taste to go with the visual.

Aringoth flinched at the attention and moved to cover himself, but to his credit stopped before Sanguine could bat his hands away. He spread his hands over his thighs instead, staring miserably at their lengths next to each other, clearly comparing and finding himself lacking.

For his part, Sanguine kind of wished he'd known about the whole issue to begin with, because he was extremely interested to see what Aringoth would do if presented with someone else who had a tiny cock and clearly wasn’t ashamed of it. Too late now, though. He did have an idea that was almost as good. "You know any Restoration magic?"

Aringoth's shoulders and jaw tightened. "Don't be cruel. You think I haven't tried?"

Sanguine paused. "Not what I meant," he said gently, though he had to wonder who in Aringoth's life had been stupid enough to suggest using Restoration to "fix" something that wasn't a wound and didn’t need to be restored. "It can feel good." He called up Healing Hands and let Aringoth stare at the little golden ball of light. "Let me show you?"

"Mostly it's just hurt," Aringoth said.

"Do you trust me?" Sanguine asked.

Aringoth met his eyes. "Yes. I shouldn’t, but yes. All right."

Sanguine lowered his hand and cast.

Aringoth writhed and shouted and came, gloriously fast, all over himself and Sanguine’s hand, with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth open and his face and neck and chest red with arousal and embarrassment. "Oh, oh fuck," he gasped. "Fuck, I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to, sorry."

Sanguine left off casting to kiss Aringoth. "Don't be," he growled. "Hot as _fuck._ Daedra of an ego boost."

"Oh," Aringoth said, still trying to catch his breath. "But—what about you—?"

Sanguine drew back so he could give Aringoth a predatory grin. "Don't worry. I'm not done with you yet." He considered his hand and Aringoth's thighs, wet with semen, then said, "Better clean this up, hadn't I," and licked a broad stripe up the palm of his hand.

"Afhvgn," Aringoth said, eyes wide.

"You know, I think that's one of those Dwarven cities," Sanguine mused, entertained. He licked off the rest of his hand and used it to tap the side of Aringoth's ass. "Scoot up, sweetness."

Aringoth did, apparently for total lack of any other response. Sanguine pulled off his pants, underwear, and boots while he was at it, then settled himself between Aringoth's legs. "Hey, when you said you didn't want to be on the bottom, did you mean that literally, or did you just mean you don't want anything in your ass?"

"Um, the second one," Aringoth said. "But... I mean, I know it's pretty much all I'm good for...."

Sanguine blinked at him for a second, thrown. Divines and Daedra damned, someone had really done a number on this guy, whether they'd just been unimaginative and that had fed into his existing issues, or what. "I have so much to show you," he said, then remembered what he was in the middle of. "But hold that thought." He ducked his head down and kissed his way up the inside of Aringoth's thigh, pausing to lick up any flecks of white.

"Oh fuck," Aringoth said, watching him. "You can't—that can't taste very good, can iiiit—!" Sanguine had started lavishing attention on his balls, ostensibly to clean them but really because he wanted to see how high-pitched Aringoth could get. He sucked gently and Aringoth actually whimpered. "Ow—too soon—ow—"

Sanguine let him go, slightly disappointed that he wouldn’t get to tease Aringoth into round two, but oh well. He'd had somewhere he was going with this, what was it... oh, right. He snagged his shirt off the floor and used it to (gently) wipe up both of them. "Sit up against the wall there, I got something I want to try."

Aringoth looked a little skeptical, but moved over obligingly. Sanguine sat between his legs and leaned against him so his back was to Aringoth's front and Aringoth was looking over his shoulder comfortably. His shirt he spread between his own thighs, dry side down, to keep the furs clean. He took Aringoth's hand and drew it down over his belly. "I'm gonna assume you've done this at least once before."

"Had sex with a total stranger? Abused medical spells to get off? Actually told someone to stop because what they were doing felt too good? No, those are all firsts," Aringoth said dryly. His thumb stroked over Sanguine's skin idly, while his fingers dipped lower and drew random circles.

Sanguine laughed. "No, I meant masturbating."

"Well, yes," Aringoth said, and then he glanced down and his startled breath and sudden shock of renewed lust told Sanguine he'd caught the insinuation. He still didn’t move, though.

Sanguine tipped his head back and to the side to nose at Aringoth's jaw. "Hm? Go ahead and play."

Aringoth's hand crept down to circle loosely around Sanguine’s cock. Sanguine moaned quietly. Even the slight contact felt good, more so when Aringoth tested the weight in his hand.

"It's heavy," he murmured. "I didn't think it'd be so similar. Don't know why."

Sanguine slit his eyes open. "You've never had sex with a man before?" he asked.

"Once," Aringoth said, sounding as though he'd rather not repeat the experience. "It was... we didn't do this."

Sanguine kissed the side of his neck. He found Aringoth's other hand and twined their fingers together. "Anyone who doesn't take their time with you is wasting a treasure."

Aringoth snorted. "That was terrible," he informed Sanguine, then, before Sanguine could protest that he wasn't joking, added, "Is it... very different, do you think?"

"Not unless you get up to some really weird shit when you're alone," Sanguine said. "Don't worry about getting me off, just do whatever you want."

"You say that now," Aringoth said dryly, but he moved his hand tentatively over Sanguine's cock, a slow stroke up and down. "Is that good?"

"Yesssss," Sanguine hissed. He spread his legs wider so he had more leverage to push his hips up. "Please keep going."

Aringoth didn’t say anything, but he kept exploring gently and Sanguine made sure to be very vocal in his approval, along with squirming a bit more than strictly necessary. Aringoth circled his thumb over the head. "Are you really so sensitive?" he murmured.

Sanguine let his head fall back with a soft thump and tried to get together enough breath to answer. "Mmn, heh, honestly, it's mostly y—" He cut himself off with a quiet cry when Aringoth added a slight twist to his still-glacial pace. "Mos—mostly you."

Aringoth was clearly skeptical, but he kept his thoughts to himself and just focused on keeping a steady rhythm. Sanguine had a lot more sympathy for Drahff all of a sudden; slow and steady might win the race, but it was driving him up the wall. "Please tell me this isn't how you jack off."

"It's not," Aringoth said, much more steadily and faintly amused, damn him. "But it certainly seems to be working on you. Would you come from this, if I just kept at it?"

"No—"

"Are you lying to me?"

"Yes!"

Aringoth, whom Sanguine was starting to regret ever having met, just laughed softly. Bastard. Then he freed his other hand from Sanguine’s and used it to cup his balls, and Sanguine immediately forgave him of anything and everything, because _fuck._

It wasn’t even the slowness so much as the burst of thick want from Aringoth on looking down and seeing Sanguine’s cock—and because Sanguine could feel it, his cock bobbed exactly when Aringoth's twitched, making the illusion that much more compelling.

Aringoth, whom Sanguine was either going to murder or grant phenomenal cosmic power to at the first possible opportunity, took pity on him and sped up. And then he stopped entirely and said, "Hmm."

"'Hmm' fucking _what,_" Sanguine said. He arched up, trying to provoke Aringoth into moving again, or failing that to just get any friction he could.

Aringoth called Restoration magic to the hand on Sanguine's dick. He cast, but it wasn't a continuous spell like Healing Hands, and he didn't release it, either, just held it ready. The effect was a wonderfully warm tingling, like stepping into a hot bath after a long day in the snow.

"Quick fuckin' learner," Sanguine said, with only enough breath for half the syllables. He grabbed Aringoth's thigh, half to brace himself and half to spur the wood elf on.

Aringoth laughed. "I had quite the lesson," he said, and finally, _finally_ got moving. Interestingly, he had more of a rotating motion to his wrist than a straightforward up-and-down—not that Sanguine was in much position to appreciate the intricacies of technique. He slumped down with his head back on Aringoth's shoulder and his mouth open in a long sigh and let himself drift.

Usually Sanguine kept mostly-conscious control over when he orgasmed, both because having one long orgasm was, after the novelty wore off, extremely boring, and because half the time he was pretending to be a mortal male and it tended to make his partners look at him strangely if he didn't also pretend to have a refractory period. Giving that control to his body was like letting a horse have its head: it did whatever it wanted, quite unconcerned with its rider. And then, just as he began to shake, Aringoth finished the spell.

Aringoth's hand was the chisel. Heal Other was the hammer. Sanguine broke open.

He was only vaguely aware of the world around him, and had to use that semi-awareness to try and keep anything too strange from happening to physics in the immediate area, but the rest of him had leaped into a sea of pleasure and been carried away by the current.

When he came back to himself, his chest was heaving and he couldn’t summon the will to move any of his limbs. "Fffffuck. Has anyone ever told you how good you are at that?"

"Well, no," Aringoth said, thankfully sounding amused rather than hurt.

"Oh. Right." Sanguine considered. "Other people should know how good you are at that."

"I'll take it under advisement," Aringoth said solemnly. "If you're going to fall asleep, would you mind moving first? You're heavy."

"Your pillow talk needs work," Sanguine informed him, but sat up so they could detangle themselves, then flopped over on his side. "Mm. I was gonna ask if I could get my mouth on your cock for real, but I don’t think I have the coordination for that right now, so you wanna fuck my ass?"

There was a moment of confused silence while Aringoth tried to figure out if Sanguine was joking. Eventually he said, _"How?"_

"Mmph," Sanguine said into the nearest pillow. The clueless thing had been a lot cuter before he'd had to inconvenience himself over it. "You got any lube or anything? No, wait, use the shirt, can't make it much worse."

"That's gross," Aringoth said. Sanguine heard him moving around and getting something out of a drawer. "What did you want the lube for? Because, uh, logistically speaking—"

"Hush, too much words," Sanguine said. "Get your dick all slick and come spoon me."

"I—okay," Aringoth said, nonplussed. He got in bed after a moment and slotted himself behind Sanguine. "This... is nice?"

Sanguine growled and shifted so Aringoth's erection was trapped between his ass cheeks, then ground back against him for good measure. "Is that clear enough?"

"Yes," Aringoth said, rather unsteadily. "But—you seem like you're falling asleep, should I—?"

"Eh, keep going," Sanguine mumbled, though he did make sure he was loud enough to be understood. "Kinda like it." He nestled his face into the pillow.

Aringoth's hips stuttered. Apparently he hadn’t known he had that kink. Sanguine smiled to himself and let his eyes close.

He didn’t fall asleep, although he wanted to. Instead, he dozed, staying at the vague edge of consciousness so he could feel his pliant body rocking as Aringoth rutted into him. Neither of them had very much energy, so Aringoth's second orgasm was less of a sharp peak and more of a rising swell that gently crested and left him shivering with his lips to the back of Sanguine's neck. Sanguine felt the added fluid between his legs and hummed, contented. Aringoth snuggled closer.

Sanguine basked in the unexpected intimacy until he was fairly sure Aringoth had fallen asleep for real, then slowly extracted himself. He cleaned them both up with a touch of will and arranged Aringoth on his back under one of the furs. Aringoth mumbled something; Sanguine kissed him softly and whispered, "Sleep," against his mouth, backing the suggestion with a mental nudge.

He felt a little bad about probably ruining the guy's life. Not enough to not do it, because he wanted to see where this Thieves' Guild thing was going to go, but enough that when he cleared out the safe into the realm he used as a pocket dimension, he also summoned a quill and parchment.

_I'm sorry. If you want answers, meet me at the old standing stone to the south. I can't promise you'll like them, but I can promise you nothing I said was a lie. _He hesitated, then pressed his thumb to the parchment, burning the Daedric letter S into it. That should at least warrant a second glance.

That done, he set the parchment on top of the sleeping mer, flicked his fingers to set fire to three of the beehives outside, and vanished without a trace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Restoration magic: Skyrim's answer to vibrators.
> 
> "You just pointed to all of me" I stole from HTTYD, because it's too funny not to use. "Dress in drag and do the hula" is a Lion King reference.
> 
> I never realized how much I used "hell" as a modifier until suddenly I couldn't anymore, because hell isn't a thing in TES.
> 
> On the "cross-gender" thing: one of the tenets of the Green Pact is that Bosmer can't alter their physical form. To make this not complete bullshit, I headcanon that Y'ffre makes sure any Bosmer who would otherwise be dysmorphic/dysphoric is born with the body they should have. There are Bosmer who transition socially, of course, or are genderfluid or nonbinary, and Bosmer who aren't happy with their bodies because of other people's opinions on them, but that's different from it actually feeling wrong. Of course, Aringoth doesn't live in Valenwood and Sanguine does not exactly pay a lot of attention to applied theology, so this doesn't come up in detail, but I did think about it.


	3. Thief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before we get started, I want to point y'all to Sylvaine's truly excellent podfic of the series: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1482938 and Thanatopsiturvy's gorgeous art: https://www.instagram.com/p/B2XccMFFT0l . Check them out, they're cool folks.

It took Sanguine about a week to actually get back to the Thieves' Guild, in large part because his attention span could be measured in minutes and he saw no real need to feel urgent about anything. This combination of facts meant he heard a lot of that _whoosh_ing sound deadlines made as they went by, and used it mostly as a reminder to wave to them cheerfully. When he did set foot in the Flagon, it was nearly deserted save for two thieves Sanguine sort of recognized but didn’t know. As he came closer, he heard one of them say, "So what do you think? It's not a terrible idea!"

Sanguine was immediately interested, because anything described using the phrase "it's not a terrible idea" was one hundred percent likely to be a terrible idea, and that was right up his alley. He pulled up a chair and sat in it backwards at the table, looking between the two thieves. "What's not a terrible idea?"

"I think," said the other thief, ignoring Sanguine for the moment, "that if Brynjolf catches you going on like that, your ears will be smarting for a week."

"Tsch, you're no fun. Who's to say he has to catch us? Look—" The first thief turned to Sanguine for a second opinion. "—starting a brothel: good idea or bad idea?"

"Who's 'us'?" the second thief muttered.

_"Excellent_ idea," said Sanguine, to the continued exasperation of the second thief. "Why would Brynjolf care about that? I guess if you do it in here it might get a little crowded, but." He shrugged and stole a drink from the first thief's bottle of mead.

"Hey," said the first thief, making no attempt to take it back. "Get your own. And that's what I've been saying! We don't even need our own place, we can just rent a room at the inn, nobody minds."

"They don't say anything, that doesn't mean they don't mind," the second thief pointed out. To Sanguine he said, "Who even are you?"

"Sam," Sanguine said. "It's a nickname. I have a question. Why bother starting your own brothel when you could just see if Haelga's hiring? You've got something she doesn't." He gave the first thief's lap a pointed glance.

The first thief turned red and started sputtering. The second thief threw his head back and laughed. "He's got you there, Niruin! Let me know if you need any references!"

Niruin glared at the other thief. "Shut up, Rune." He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed at Sanguine. "That's not the point of a brothel. I'm not going to be having sex with anyone."

"Yes, but what's that got to do with the brothel thing?" Rune quipped. Niruin's glare redoubled.

Sanguine took a long swallow of mead and made a show of looking Niruin up and down. He swiped his tongue across the lip of the bottle before he set it down, holding eye contact. "Why not?"

Niruin got, if possible, even redder. "Um," he said, gaze fixed on Sanguine's mouth. "I, um?"

Sanguine went to lean back, remembered just in time that he'd turned the chair around, and instead leaned forward with a smirk. "You don't need much experience to get started. Of course, I could always give you a few... lessons." Niruin made a tiny squeaking noise. Rune laughed harder. Sanguine looked sidelong at him and said, "Or you."

Rune shook his head, still amused. "I don't need any help when it comes to pleasing my partners, friend."

Niruin, eager for payback, looked up slyly and said, "So you'd have no trouble making money as a whore?"

Now it was Rune's turn to look indignant. "That's not what I said!"

"Isn't it?" Sanguine said. "I didn't offer to help with sex in general, I offered to help with getting someone to pay you for it." A blatant lie, but what they didn't know wouldn’t kill them. He raised an eyebrow. "You're that confident?"

"I—! It's not about being _confident!_" Rune said, flustered. "Just because I don't want to doesn't mean I couldn't!"

And then Niruin said the magic words, the words that Sanguine always waited for, the words that marked the point of no return and meant whatever happened after couldn't be taken back. "Oh, yeah?" he said. "Prove it."

Of course, then he realized what had come out of his mouth and immediately looked horrified, but Rune had already heard him and was now grinning wickedly. "And how would you like me to do that?" he asked, in a silken purr that made even Sanguine shiver a little bit.

"Er, maybe I should get us another round—" Niruin stood, but Rune caught his wrist before he could move away.

"Oh, I don't think so," he said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Sanguine saw Vekel signal to the big Nord with the warhammer, who didn’t change his protective hunch over his drink but was clearly aware of the entire room, and ready to break up any drunken brawls. Neither Niruin nor Rune had noticed. Sanguine finished off Niruin's mead and settled in to watch the show.

Rune turned Niruin's palm up and slid his sleeve back from his wrist. He lowered his head and breathed gently across the pulse point there, keeping his eyes locked on Niruin. "You still haven't told me what you want me to do," he said, lips brushing against thin skin. 

Niruin's fingers spasmed. _"Um,"_ he said, staring at Rune desperately. This single-minded focus meant he, along with Sanguine, saw the corner of Rune's mouth twitch up in a smirk, and it meant Sanguine got to see every thought leave Niruin's head except for: _you aren't going to let him _win, _are you?_

Niruin dropped back into his seat, awkwardness gone and replaced with faux arrogance. "Seduce me, then," he said smugly. "Unless you're just bluffing."

Rune let him go, and for a disappointed moment Sanguine thought he'd realized how stupid this was, but to his delight Rune stepped around the table and desposited himself in Niruin's lap, arms draped over his shoulders and crossed behind his neck. "How's this?" he said.

"Fine," Niruin said casually. One hand came up, but it was just to make sure Rune wouldn’t fall, not to grope him. "Not sure I'd pay you for it."

"I'd pay you for it," Sanguine volunteered. Granted, his currency was highly contextual, but it was still true. Both thieves spared him only a glance.

Rune stood and swung one leg around so he was astride Niruin and the mer was forced to tilt his head back to look up at him. His left hand caught Niruin's right and placed it firmly on his thigh, and his right hand traced over the hinge of Niruin's jaw.

Niruin started to say something, but stopped, and let Rune run delicate fingers across the planes of his face. The air between them shifted, drawing taut. Rune's eyes were dark and heavy-lidded as he looked down at Niruin, expression betraying nothing. In the background, Sanguine saw Vekel and the Nord give up on pretending they weren’t captivated as well. They just stared.

Niruin, with what appeared to be a vast effort of will, remembered that he had two hands, and set the other one on Rune's hip. He didn’t do anything else with it, and Sanguine wasn't sure if he'd meant to pull Rune closer or push him away. He didn’t think Niruin knew either.

Satisfied that Niruin was at least mildly engaged, Rune took his other hand from over Niruin's and cradled his would-be customer's head in his palm, thumb in the hollow of his cheek. With his now-free hand, he sank his fingers into Niruin's hair until he found the point of his ear. Niruin shuddered and closed his eyes.

"Is it true, then?" Rune said quietly. "You elves like your ears touched?"

"Depends on the mer," Niruin mumbled. It was perhaps a testament to how much Rune had affected him that the next thing he said was, "Honestly, I would pay you just for this. It's nice to be—close."

"Mm," Rune said, so softly Sanguine almost couldn’t hear it. "I'm going to kiss you now."

"Oh," Niruin breathed, mouth falling open slightly; Rune covered it carefully with his own. They held still for a single moment, as though posing for a sculptor, and then Rune began to rock leisurely against Niruin. He didn’t deepen the kiss, just replaced it over and over, tenderly and maddeningly, if Niruin's low, stuttered exhale was any indication.

Three thieves entered the Flagon from the cistern and halted in the doorway. Sanguine suddenly wished he was any good at painting, because their identical expressions of confusion, disbelief, and not a little interest were absolutely _priceless._ The one on the right promptly turned on his heel and hastened back the way they'd come; Vex, after a hard but unreadable glance at Sanguine, followed him. The one left was a short, bald man, who approached but thoughtfully waited until Niruin and Rune had broken apart before clearing his throat.

Rune, hilariously, leapt up like a startled cat, and tried to back up. Between the table and Niruin's grip on him, he didn't get far, and mostly succeeded in losing his balance. Niruin reflexively pulled him closer to keep him from falling, but all that this accomplished was changing the direction of Rune's downward momentum, sending him crashing back into Niruin. By the time they untangled themselves, both were blushing furiously and looking anywhere but at another living person.

"Lose a bet, did we?" the new thief said, looking vaguely amused. He didn’t wait for an answer before turning to Sanguine. "You're Sam, yeah? Delvin Mallory. Get up and turn around."

"Buy me a drink first," Sanguine drawled, but he stood up anyway and let Delvin lead him back toward the secret entrance to the cistern.

Delvin rolled his eyes. "I _meant,_ Maven Black-Briar wants to see you, and she's not gonna do it down here."

"Right," Sanguine said. "Ah... who's that again?"

"Oh, nobody special, just one of our most important clients and the woman who practically funds the Guild single-handedly. You know. No reason to pay attention to her, you just go on your merry way."

Sanguine held up his hands. "I didn't say I wasn't gonna do it. I've only been part of your group for like two weeks. Why does she want me?"

Delvin shrugged. "Was you who did Goldenglow, wasn't it? Oh, Mercer says good job on that."

Sanguine gave Delvin a look that he hoped conveyed how extremely skeptical of that statement he was.

"Well, Brynjolf said good job," Delvin relented. "Mercer just whined about you skipping town, but don't worry about him, he's got a terminal case of stick-in-ass recently. You left the haul with Vekel, that's good enough for us."

What he'd actually done was teleport the papers and bag of septims to a random table in the Flagon with a note explaining what it was, because he couldn't be bothered to do it in person, but six of one, half a dozen of the other. "Okay," Sanguine said. "Where's Maven?"

Delvin relaxed marginally, like he hadn't actually been sure Sanguine was going to go along with it. "She'll be waiting for you at the Bee and Barb. Owned by two Argonians, nice folks, maybe not too bright but nothing against 'em. They have a space set aside for 'business deals' of our sort."

"Your sort, maybe," Sanguine said with a leer. "I've gathered 'my sort' operates out of a different establishment."

Delvin caught his arm, looking very serious. "Do _not _try that with Maven," he said. "You can't afford it. We can't afford it. Just go see her, smile and nod, do whatever she wants, say thank you and leave. You fuck this up with her, we can't help you. Not won't, _can't._ Got it?"

Sanguine tilted his head, eyes glittering. "You're afraid," he said.

Delvin leaned in so he could speak in a lower tone of voice. "You're damn right I'm afraid," he said tightly. "This is more than just bad luck. Someone or something out there wants us broken and gone." He hesitated. "The others think I'm superstitious, but we're cursed, and that's a fact."

Now this was interesting. "You don't seem the type to give up and go home," Sanguine prompted.

Delvin snorted. "This is home. We're thieves. You think no one's tried to stamp us out before? Daedra take anyone who thinks he's gonna win."

"Done."

Delvin blinked, startled. "What?"

"Nothing," Sanguine said innocently. "Give us a kiss?"

"What?" Delvin said again, thoroughly derailed. "Why?"

Sanguine smirked. "For luck, of course." He caught Delvin's gaze and held it, an unspoken dare.

Delvin hesitated for a long moment, long enough that Sanguine thought he might actually do it, but at last he just pushed Sanguine away and let him go. "Make your own luck," he said, though he sounded more tolerant than annoyed. "'s what the rest of us are doing."

Sanguine gave him a wink and something that could have been a salute if the commanding officer in question had had about four shots too many, and wandered back outside to find Maven.

Riften, for all its goings-on, wasn't that big of a town, and Maven, being a "perfectly normal law-abiding citizen" (air quotes included), had no reason to hide. Sanguine, who was zero for three on all counts, thought this was playing it a bit safe, but hey, whatever worked for her.

"You don't need to court me, I'm a lot simpler than that," he said by way of greeting, and dropped into the chair opposite Maven with a smirk.

Maven didn’t even blink. She leveled a steady, mild look at Sanguine and took a long sip of her wine. Sanguine was grudgingly impressed. He refused to be intimidated, but for a mortal, Maven was good.

She set her goblet down. "I've been told you visited Goldenglow," she said, exactly as if he hadn't spoken. Sanguine supposed she was gracefully ignoring his faux pas. He'd have to try harder.

He tilted his head with a small smile. "I did. The owner was extremely accommodating."

"Good. I have another job for you, then. Have you heard of Honningbrew Meadery?"

"Ah, no. Should I have? Wait, don't you run a meadery? Is that yours? In which case I've definitely heard of it and it's amazing."

That got him a real smile, if a short-lived and well-concealed one. "If all goes well, it will be," Maven said. "With Goldenglow not producing at peak capacity—an unfortunate but necessary sacrifice—production of Black-Briar Mead has suffered as well. Honningbrew appeared apparently overnight, with far too much money and influence for a starting venture. I will not have them overtake us. Get to the Bannered Mare in Whiterun and meet with an Imperial man named Mallus Maccius. He'll fill you in on the details."

Sanguine nodded, mulling this over. "Or," he said, "you could just tell me the details now, and I can get whatever it is done much quicker, because frankly I don't want to go to Whiterun and I don't give a shit about your little monopoly or your politics. I'm only doing this because it seemed like it might be fun and now I'm curious what Mercer's hiding and how many thieves I can hook up with by the end of the month."

Again, Maven's expression didn’t so much as flicker. Her eyes, though, grew blank, and then piercing, and then furious. When she spoke, her voice was only fractionally tighter. "You tread a fine wire, Mr. Guevenne. I can only conclude that you are either phenomenally overconfident or criminally underambitious. If it is the former, I can assure you, you will not remain so for long. If the latter, I will thank you to _stop patronizing me._"

Sanguine propped his head up on his hand. "I'm just telling you the truth, sweetcheeks. The whole clever-twist deal isn't my thing. Ain't got the patience for it."

Maven studied him, inscrutable. Sanguine got the distinct impression of a sabrecat picking out the juiciest-looking rabbit. The problem with that analogy was that her current quarry was not so much a rabbit, but a dragon. "You will remain disappointed," she said at last. "I prefer to delegate such matters. I find trusting my employees to find their own solutions to problems is far more rewarding. Not to mention discreet. You may either take the commission and meet with my contact in Whiterun, or you may inform Mercer that you believe the job requires a more capable thief. I do not have the patience to indulge the ramblings of the uninformed."

"Fiiiiiiiine," Sanguine said, and stood and stretched, mostly to be annoying. It rankled a little that he couldn't get under Maven's skin, or at least her clothes. "I'm doin' it my way, though. Tough luck if you don't like it."

"I would expect nothing less," Maven said evenly. "Of course, you will be compensated as soon as I hear from Mallus that the task is complete." She picked up a book from the table and opened it, a clear dismissal.

"Hey, that boss lady thing is hot," Sanguine threw over his shoulder as he left. "You really pull it off."

Maven didn’t react, except for another hidden hint of amusement. "Noted," she said, and turned a page. Dammit.

It wasn’t until Sanguine was out of the building that he realized Maven had deliberately used his alias's last name, and he'd only ever given the Guild the first one.

Huh.

* * *

He went looking for Drahff and Hewnon after that, since they still "owed him a favor" and he knew if he didn't call it in soon he'd completely forget about it. Plus, it would make the whole thing less boring. He found them in a secluded side room, sitting against the wall with Drahff in Hewnon's lap and their hands busy between them. Hewnon, facing the rest of the room, saw Sanguine first and grunted in acknowledgement. Drahff twisted around and hesitated, throwing off the rhythm they'd settled into.

"Don't mind me," Sanguine said quietly. He came closer and leaned on the wall next to the pair to get a better look, but didn’t try to insinuate himself without being asked. That was just bad manners.

Drahff still hesitated, but then he bit his lip and rested his forehead against Hewnon's, closing his eyes. Hewnon murmured something to him, and, when Drahff nodded, dragged their clasped hands up and down their cocks again. Drahff shuddered and picked up where he'd left off with only a few false starts.

Neither said anything, and Sanguine kept quiet too. This obviously wasn’t the first time they'd had sex, and possibly wasn't even the first time they'd had sex that day. The urgency of lust had dulled slightly, but there was still a burning undercurrent, one that Sanguine’s presence sweetened. Drahff got off on being watched by someone "safe;" Hewnon got off on not caring that he was being watched by anyone. Sanguine was perfectly content to indulge them both.

Drahff made a low sound and nudged Hewnon into a faster pace. They had their opposite hands cupped, mirrored around their cocks, creating a spit-slick channel for them to fuck in short, shallow bursts. Neither spoke; the only sound was their jagged breathing.

Drahff kept wanting to squirm, and every time he did, he interrupted their rhythm and they were forced to slow down again to regain it. The third or fourth time it happened, Hewnon growled and wrapped his free arm around Drahff's waist, forcing him to keep still, and covered Drahff's gasp with an open-mouthed kiss. Pinned, the only way Drahff could move was to grind his hips against Hewnon's, which he did, in little pulses that set them both groaning.

He took his other hand off Hewnon's shoulder to circle his thumb over the heads. Hewnon bucked and came, still quiet. Drahff followed him not long after, making little mewling noises against Hewnon's mouth and working them over just slightly too long, so their grip was messy with semen and Hewnon jerked and shivered at the rough treatment.

Hewnon forced their hands still and away, and Drahff slumped into him, turning sideways to avoid the mess. He nuzzled at Hewnon's neck and shoulder, contented.

Sanguine knelt beside them. They were actually more toward Mara's or Dibella's side of things, enough that he couldn't really count it as his anymore, but there was a lot of overlap and he liked basking in afterglow, even when it wasn't his own. He took Drahff's hand gently, since it was on the closer side, and licked the fluid from it. He didn't even really mean it as a seduction tactic. The two mortals watched him through slit eyes, too worn to have an opinion.

He'd finished Drahff's hand and started on Hewnon's by the time either of them spoke up. "What are you doing that for?" Hewnon asked.

Sanguine took Hewnon's fingers out of his mouth. "I wanted to," he said simply.

"Mm."

After another few minutes, their breathing had slowed and they were looking semi-alert enough that Sanguine said, "I need your help."

They exchanged a confused look. "With what?" Drahff said.

"A job," Sanguine said. "Supposed to go to Whiterun, mess with some guy's brewery. Thought it'd be more interesting with you two along."

"Isn't interesting something you want to avoid?" Hewnon asked.

Sanguine shrugged with the arm not braced against the wall. "I get bored easily. And you owe me."

Drahff sat up. "What are the odds we're going to die doing whatever this is?"

"Almost none," Sanguine assured him. "Cant see the future, of course, but I want entertainment, not casualties."

"Whiterun's a long ride," Hewnon said.

"Oh. Right," Sanguine said. "About that. Would you rather spend four days in the back of a wagon, sleep in the snow, and have to pay somebody to let you do it, or would you rather close your eyes and not ask too many questions and be in Whiterun in two minutes?"

They stared at him, then at each other. Then Hewnon put his clean hand over Drahff's eyes and shut his own.

"Good choice," Sanguine said, and pulled them all to an empty room in the Bannered Mare, cleaning them up as he did so. "Ta-daaaa."

Drahff got Hewnon's hand off his face and looked at their surroundings in shock. He turned wide eyes to Sanguine. "...Who are you?"

Sanguine stood up and considered him. "Do you really want me to answer that?" he asked softly.

Drahff swallowed hard and shook his head.

"Then call me Sam." He paused for effect. "Get dressed for now, though, we have to meet, uh, whatever his name is."

Hewnon helped Drahff up off him, then stood and rearranged his own armor so it lay like it was supposed to. "Won't not knowing that make it hard to find him?"

"Nah," said Sanguine, and didn’t elaborate. What he'd meant when he said it was that he could cheat with Daedric magic, but when they arrived on the first floor, that turned out to be redundant. Sanguine just headed for the only person in the place looking both miserable and extremely suspect.

He dropped himself into the empty seat next to the Imperial. "Can I buy you a drink?"

Presumably-Mallus eyed him with undisguised distaste. "I'm waiting for someone else, actually."

Sanguine propped his chin on his hand and his elbow on the table and did his best impression of a winsome grin. "Would that someone have been sent by Maven Black-Briar, perhaps?"

Mallus's eyes widened. "Not so loud!" he hissed. "You're who she hired? You don't look—never mind. Let's head outside so we can talk where it's quieter."

Sanguine stood and beckoned to Hewnon and Draff, who had been trying to look inconspicuous and had therefore become the most interesting things in the room. "Friends of mine," he explained. Mallus just waved them all outside impatiently.

"Okay, so, what do we have to do?" Sanguine said as soon as the door shut behind them.

Mallus shook his head. "Not here." He lead them on a furtive twenty-minute walk outside the city, behind some small farms, out of sight of the watchtowers. The secluded spot was currently unoccupied, but it was obviously prime territory for local teenagers shirking their chores to fool around with each other. There, he rambled along about some poison and a man named Sabjorn, something something blah blah Sanguine wasn’t really listening. He was too busy wondering if he could get any of the three men with him to use the spot for its intended purpose. Or, wait, its actual intended purpose was probably a cow pasture or something. Its unintended purpose, then.

"Yep sure sounds great," he said, when Mallus finally shut up. "Only, I'm gonna need payment for all that."

Mallus paused, confused. "I'm sure Maven offered a healthy amount, provided everything goes as planned."

"Sure, and that'll work for them." Sanguine waved a hand at Drahff and Hewnon, who seemed to have decided discretion, or in this case silence and a healthy distance between them and the blast zone, was the better part of valor. "But money's not what I want." He advanced on Mallus, making sure he was cornered.

Mallus, bless him, was totally clueless. "Right, well, whatever it is, once Honningbrew is ours, Maven will be more than happy to accommodate you. If we could get on with it before the commander arrives?"

Sanguine took another step forward, predatory. Mallus's back hit the wall and his eyes widened before he stifled the emotion, equal parts anticipation, arousal, and fear, and tried to go back to just being annoyed. "I certainly won't say no if Maven wants to _accommodate _me," Sanguine purred, "but Maven isn't here right now. And I take my payment up front."

"And in back, I bet," Hewnon muttered, low enough that Mallus didn’t hear. Sanguine had to press his teeth together to keep from laughing, and only just managed to turn his amusement into a toothy grin.

Mallus swallowed. "What do you...." He shook his head. "Fine. What is it?"

Sanguine leaned forward. "Simple. You have two options. Either you jerk yourself off, right here, right now, _or_ you admit out loud to something you wish didn’t turn you on. And don't think of lying, I'll know." He considered. "Or both, I'm not a stickler for rules."

Mallus stared, caught himself, and stared again, rapidly coloring. His mouth worked as he tried to pick an objection. "But we're out in the open," he said weakly.

Drahff intervened. "You don't have to do that."

"He does if he wants my help," Sanguine said, not looking away from Mallus. He appreciated the attempt at ethics, really he did, but what Drahff didn’t know was that Mallus very much wanted to be pressured, and that Sanguine’s ultimatum had sent a bolt of frantic, humiliated lust from his heels to his groin.

"Sun's past set," Sanguine coaxed. "No one'll see us unless you draw attention." He didn’t have to imply _and if you do, it'll be your fault_. Mallus's brain did it for him.

Mallus licked his suddenly dry lips, but he couldn't tear his gaze away from Sanguine. "I... I don't...."

"You'd better decide," Sanguine said softly. "We wouldn't want to keep the commander waiting."

Mallus looked away. His tongue flicked out again, more a nervous tic than any way to make speaking easier. He didn’t say anything, and didn’t say anything, and didn’t say anything, and Sanguine sensed Drahff shifting his weight next to him but Mallus's breathing had gone tighter and uneven so Sanguine just waited.

"Sabjorn, he—" Mallus said, then stopped and pressed his lips into a thin line. "I'll be glad to be rid of him, I don't like him and I'm not attracted to him, but...." He glanced up, flushed, and looked back down. "He—he'll give—orders, and I don’t want... but sometimes I imagine what it would be like if I _did_...."

"If you did?" Sanguine prompted him, when he failed to continue.

Mallus flinched and shut his eyes. "If he wasn't.... I _hate_ him, but every so often he'll say something like, 'Good job,' and just for a second I want to beg him like a fucking dog." He looked at Sanguine, defeated. "Satisfied?"

"Maybe," Sanguine said. "Beg him for what?"

"Nothing he'll give me," Mallus said bitterly, though he was doing a poor job of hiding his body's reaction, both to the thought and to the embarrassment of having to say it out loud. "Permission to be a person, or acknowledgement of the work I've done, or...."

"What's the part you like?" Drahff said, startling Mallus and reminding Sanguine of his existence. "Is it the praise, or the attention, or...?"

Mallus grimaced. "He... he owns me, really." He looked disgusted with himself. "I hate it and I hate that I like it. It feels like I'm choking on how much I want to... I don't even know, really. The thought of submitting to Sabjorn makes me nauseous, but if I pretend it's someone who cares, even in a general sense like you'd care about your cow or your horse, I—well." He gestured helplessly at the now prominent bulge in his pants, mouth twisted to the side.

"Y'know, there's people who do that kinda thing and they do like each other," Sanguine said. "You gonna take care of that?"

"I thought I only had to...." He caught Sanguine’s expression and sighed. "I didn’t have to do any of it, did I."

"No, not really," Sanguine admitted cheerfully. "But you wanted to."

Mallus glared. "If anyone sees us, I'm blaming you," he said, already unbuttoning his pants.

"No one's gonna see us," Sanguine said, and made a show of looking around the dimly-lit and deserted field. In the process, he saw Hewnon walking back from the meadery. "Hey, where were you?"

"Doing the actual work," Hewnon said dryly. He held up a key, then noticed Mallus, leaning against the wall with his eyes closed. "Somehow, I'm not surprised. What is it this time, he has to come or he'll die?"

"No, but that's a great idea," Sanguine said brightly. 

Drahff smacked Hewnon's arm. "Now you've done it."

Sanguine laughed. "Relax, I'll do it to myself. Pay attention."

"That's not any better," Drahff said, but subsided to watch Mallus. "Maybe we could take him for a weekend," he murmured to Hewnon. "Make him work until he's too sore to move, then reward him for pleasing us so well."

"Oh." Hewnon's eyes widened, and for someone who'd missed most of the explanation, he caught on quickly. "Get him too tired to touch himself, even. So he'd have to come to us for it. Should we let him choose how?"

"Mm... no," Drahff decided. Mallus moaned through clenched teeth and his hand sped up. "We'd know what he wanted. He wouldn't have to ask, would he? All he'd have to do is rest and let us take care of him after he did so well."

Mallus stifled a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a groan as he came, hips pushing forward into the air and his free hand grabbing at the wall. When he was done he let go of himself and slumped against the wall, breathing hard.

Drahff and Hewnon had fallen silent to watch raptly, and Sanguine wasn't about to ruin the moment, so it was Mallus who eventually straightened and did up his pants and said uncertainly, "Is that something you'd do?"

The other two men exchanged a look. "We live in Riften," Hewnon said, "but... once or twice, maybe. We could arrange something. Depending."

"I can keep an eye out," Sanguine volunteered.

Mallus shot him a skeptical look. "For what, people who want to own another human but aren't utter bastards?"

"Yeah," Sanguine said. "Long as you're not too picky about religious preferences. Or, uh, species." Because he could think of about a dozen dremora off the top of his head who would adore this guy and his apparently shamefully underexplored service submission kink. It could probably wait until the whole mess was over with, though. Sanguine’s dremora weren't very... subtle, in the same way that a mammoth wasn’t very small. Maybe he could pick one of the smarter ones.

Drahff caught Mallus's look and shook his head. "Don't ask. How long do we have before Caius gets here?"

"Hour, hour and a half," Mallus said. He tried to look authoritative but couldn't quite get the muscles in his shoulders to tense up all the way. "I should go make myself visible so Sabjorn doesn't suspect me. Good luck."

"Pffff, it's a bunch of skeevers, how hard could it be?" Sanguine said.

Drahff pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed.

* * *

Somewhat gratifyingly, it wasn't that hard, at least to begin with. Hewnon was handy with his mace and Sanguine just rendered any skeever that came near him dead and pretended to be doing magic. Drahff actually did magic, mostly a cheap lightning spell that he could cook the skeevers with, and filled the tunnels with the scent of roasted meat and charred hair.

Weirdly, all of the tunnels were large enough for them to walk through, albeit hunched and single-file. Still, skeevers didn’t usually spend the effort to make more room than they needed, and on top of that, they seemed to have no fear of bipeds, another oddity.

When Hewnon, wading through a mob of skeevers, took a bite to the calf and stumbled briefly, Sanguine decided it was getting tedious and simply killed all the remaining hostiles in the burrow. Hewnon nodded tiredly but didn’t get up off his knees, and in fact had to use his mace to brace himself upright. Sanguine figured he just needed a minute, but Hewnon continued to look worse and worse.

Drahff came over to him when he started to sway, then looked up at Sanguine, worried. "This isn't normal. I don't care who you are, fix him, please."

Sanguine watched them, bemused. "It's just a skeever bite, he'll be fine."

Hewnon bent over and threw up.

"Or not," Sanguine allowed.

Drahff glared. _"Fix him."_

"Yeah, yeah, calm down," Sanguine said. He prodded one of the intact bodies, then pried open its mouth to inspect its teeth. Weird. "Y'ever heard of a venomous skeever?" He let go and handed Drahff a vial of Cure Poison, which was easier than trying to diagnose the actual problem.

Drahff snatched it up and fed it to Hewnon, who, despite not looking terribly ill, gamely let Drahff fuss over him. Immediately his color began to improve, and Drahff exhaled in relief. Cute, but really, Sanguine had said they wouldn't die, what did they take him for? Boethiah?

After a minute, Hewnon got to his feet, only steadying himself on Drahff once. He winced when he put weight on his injured leg, but could stand on it after gingerly testing it. "Do you think our friend knew?"

Drahff's expression darkened. "He better not have. Come on. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

Now that the only real danger was from tripping over a dead skeever, they made progress quickly, until just before a turn Hewnon cocked his head and held up a hand. "Do you hear that?"

Sanguine stopped and listened. Further into the caves, he could hear a chorus of soft yips, and, more bizarrely, a person's voice frantically hushing them. He shrugged at Drahff's confused look and stepped around the corner. "Hello?"

The man kneeling on the floor hunched protectively over some squirming thing in front of him. "Please don't hurt them," he begged. His hands shook where he held them to try and take the brunt of an attack. He saw Hewnon and Drahff behind Sanguine and his shoulders slumped. "Or kill me, too, then."

They stared at him. "What?" Drahff said.

"What's that?" Hewnon said.

"You know you have upstairs neighbors, right?" Sanguine said.

"I what?" the man said.

Drahff squinted. "Are those _skeever pups?"_

"You were breeding venomous skeevers?" Sanguine said, fascinated.

"Aren't you worried they'll bite you?" Hewnon asked.

The man sat up, thoroughly taken off guard. "No, they don't produce venom until they're mature," he said blankly. "Wait—what are you doing here? How did you get in? Did you kill the adults somehow?"

"What do you mean, how did we get in?" Drahff said. "We got in the same way the skeevers are getting out to the meadery."

"What meadery?"

"How long have you been down here?" Sanguine asked.

Hewnon frowned in confusion. "Wait, if you didn't know about the meadery, how did _you _get in?"

"There's... a cave," the man said, gesturing vaguely at one of the tunnels behind him. One of the smaller pups cried, and he picked it up to soothe it, holding it against his chest. "If you're going to kill us, could you get it over with?"

"Why would we do that?" Sanguine said. "We got hired to clear the skeevers out of the meadery."

"Hold on," Drahff said. "Why are you down here in the first place? Don't tell me your life's ambition is breeding skeevers."

"Well, it wasn't," the man said wryly. "I was going to get revenge on... it doesn't matter. They had pups and I...." He sat cross-legged and scooped the rest of the pups into his lap. "They're just the cutest things, aren't they?"

"...Sure," said Hewnon. "Only, you can't stay here. If nothing else, sooner or later bandits will come by."

"And I won't be able to protect them on my own with all the adults dead, no," the man agreed. He looked at one of the pups that had latched onto his thumb and grimaced. "I'll have to try and wean a couple of these early. The others are already eating meat and insects, but this one was from a late litter."

"Why do you only have six?" Drahff said. "Don't skeevers have lots of babies?"

"You got a name?" Sanguine interjected.

"Hamelyn," the man said. "And don't I know it. They grow fast. I've been culling the ones that don't tame down by the time they're grown. These are from about two weeks—" He pointed at the smallest pup. "—to a couple months." He indicated the largest of the group, about half the size of an adult. It grabbed his hand and started to wrestle with it. "Good girl, no biting. I'll probably have to start again with a new population to avoid inbreeding. Maybe without the venom this time."

"'This time'?" Hewnon said.

Sanguine cleared his throat. "Actually, I might have an idea. You know Namira? She's got some cultists in those mountains to the west, you'd like 'em. Probably."

Hamelyn blinked. "How are you expecting me to get to the Reach with six skeever pups in tow?"

"Oh, right," Sanguine said. "About that."

* * *

He didn’t stay long after introducing Hamelyn to the handful of people living in some cave outside of Markarth. There'd been a bit of a hold-up when they’d asked, with heavy subtext, whether Hamelyn ate _raw_ meat, and Hamelyn had looked blank and said that was how you caught rockjoint, did they not have any way to make a fire, and they'd all gone around in a bit of a circle until Sanguine got tired of it and said, "They eat people," and Hamelyn had said, "Oh, all right then, as long as they don't hurt the pups," and that had been that. Drahff and Hewnon, who'd stayed behind in Whiterun to see Mallus's plan through, had looked rather disturbed at this revelation, and decided they'd rather not know the details.

"So what now?" Drahff said, after they'd watched a spluttering Sabjorn get hauled off to Dragonsreach. Mallus had kept a remarkably straight face the whole way through, gravely promising the guard commander that he would fix the meadery's vermin problem as soon as possible. Like it had already happened, in fact. He'd seen them off and Sanguine had brought the three of them back to Riften, where it was getting to be the middle of the night.

Sanguine shrugged. "You can take the gold or whatever from Maven, I don't need it. Tell her I sent you."

Drahff hesitated.

"He means, will we see you again?" Hewnon said. "You're obviously some kind of magic."

Sanguine opened his mouth, about to say he wasn’t done in Riften but wouldn’t make any promises, when a thought struck him and he grinned instead. "You wanna join the Thieves' Guild?"

They blinked at him. "...Are you allowed to do that?" Drahff said.

Sanguine turned his grin into a saucy smirk. "What could possibly go wrong?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ughhhh this one fought me. Expect a few months without updates, I need to refresh my brain and work on something else for a bit.


	4. Acolyte

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Working title for this chapter: How to Win at Truth or Dare
> 
> Quick previously-on since I know it's been half a year: Sanguine met Brynjolf in Riften and started the Thieves' Guild questline, pretending to be a normal mortal. On the way to the Cistern, he met Drahff and Hewnon, had sex with them (naturally), and managed to drag them along on the Honningbrew quest. They know something's up with him but they're not sure exactly what. At the end of the last chapter he offered to get them into the Thieves' Guild, complete with the phrase "what's the worst that could happen?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be an interlude chapter but it took the longest and I think it wound up being the longest at like 8k words. Because I'm great at time management.
> 
> Also, not dead yet.

"What in Oblivion made you think this would go well?" Vex asked, and Sanguine knew she didn't really want an answer, but he opened his mouth anyway.

As predicted, she held up a hand to stop him. "It doesn't matter; Mercer's out on a job with Brynjolf, and they're who you'd talk to about it, but, word of advice, don't. You can't just invite whoever you want to the Thieves' Guild."

"But you don't actually know that they'd say no," Sanguine said.

"I have a pretty good guess," she deadpanned.

"But you don't get to say for sure, right?"

The look on Vex's face said she knew where this was going and she wasn't happy about the eventual destination. "Technically, no. Guildmaster gets final say."

"And this is a public tavern, right?"

"Technically," said Vex.

"Yes!" said Vekel, not about to lose out on paying customers.

"Great!" Sanguine said brightly. He grabbed a chair from a neighboring table and plopped down in it. Drahff and Hewnon fidgeted awkwardly behind him, unsure. "What're we talking about?"

Vex rolled her eyes, but Niruin and Delvin, the other two at the table when Sanguine had come in and either much smarter or much stupider than Vex, looked respectively interested and amused. Delvin waved the two non-Guild thieves to take a seat, which they did, albeit not next to the table as there wasn't room.

"I'm spreading sixty-year-old gossip about Bosmer nobility and how extremely easy it is to get them drunk and rob them blind," Niruin volunteered. "Mostly via childish party games, for some reason."

"Like what?" Sanguine said, although he'd probably invented half of them and almost certainly knew whatever Niruin was about to come up with next. He wasn't disappointed.

"I always tried to steer it towards Truth or Dare," Niruin said, shrugging. "Then they'd just tell you where they kept all the expensive stuff, and a few times I even got the kid to break into the parents' safe for me. So foolish, so lucrative."

"Why would they do that?" Vex asked skeptically. "Not paying attention is one thing, handing your jewels to a thief is another. I don't buy it."

Delvin grinned and gestured with his bottle of mead. "We should play, then. Find out."

Vex gave him a long look and an exasperated sigh.

"I've never heard of it," Sanguine lied. "How does it go?"

"Well, first you need at least two and preferably more than four people who are all too drunk to talk about sex without giggling," Niruin said dryly. "The way it goes when I played it, we got through about two rounds and then I'd spike the drinks, steal whatever I wanted, and pretend to be just as hungover as the rest of them the next morning. The way it's supposed to work is, here." He indicated the loose circle they sat in. "Pretend we're all playing and it's my turn. I pick someone and ask them, 'Truth or dare?'" He pointed at Sanguine. "If you say truth, I get to ask you any question I want and you have to answer it truthfully. If you choose dare, I get to make you do something risky. Sometimes there's a forfeit that you can take instead of answering the question or doing the dare, there's all kinds of house rules. Can't pick the same thing three times in a row, forfeit is doing the other thing, whatever."

"Why would anyone agree to that?" Drahff said blankly.

Vex made an unimpressed "mm" noise. "Because they all want to ask each other who they've fucked."

"Right," Niruin said. "And noble kids never think they have anything to hide. Civilians aren't terribly imaginative."

"Well, I'm in," Sanguine said.

There was a pause as everyone thought of what they might be asked, and then another, much more interested pause as everyone thought of what they might ask the others.

"This is a terrible idea," Vex said.

Twenty minutes later, they'd cleared the tables from the middle of a circle of chairs, and a handful of other thieves had agreed to play too, leaving them in clockwise order Niruin, Rune, Cynric, Vex, Thrynn, Delvin, Drahff, Hewnon, and Sanguine. Vekel, Dirge, and Tonilia, while still in the Ragged Flagon, weren't playing. Vekel had pointed out that he and Dirge were working, and Tonilia had just taken one look at Sanguine and shaken her head, which, he supposed, was fair.

The ground rules were laid out: nothing too flagrantly illegal or permanently harmful, you had one chance each to refuse a question or dare, respectively, "and no daring people to have sex with you," Vex said, with pointed looks at the rest of the players, all of whom were male. There was some good-natured laughter at this from the thieves who'd known Vex the longest, but everyone agreed to the rules easily enough and Niruin repeated his explanation for anyone who'd missed it.

"Drinks are on me," Sanguine said, to general approval.

"On you or _on _you?" Hewnon said, not particularly quietly.

Sanguine grinned. "Why not both?"

"Who's first?" Delvin asked.

"I'll be an example and then we'll go to the left?" Niruin suggested. "Oh, thanks." He took the tray of bottles from Vekel and started handing them around the circle. "Okay, um...." Niruin made a show of looking the other players over. "Delvin! Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

"Coward! Uh, fuck-marry-kill, Mercer, Brynjolf, aaaaaaand Maven."

Delvin groaned, to scattered laughter. "Couldn't have gone easy on me? Hm. D'you mean as we are now, or in some alternate dimension where there aren't any consequences?"

"Both," Vex put in. Niruin grinned and nodded.

"Yeah, I walked into that one, didn't I. Right, well, the smart thing to do is to marry Maven for her money, kill Mercer 'cause he's a bastard, and fuck Brynjolf." Delvin gestured with the neck of his bottle. "But if I didn't have to worry about the Guild or any of that, I'd much rather be married to Brynjolf than Maven, 'cause she's a frigid bitch and proud of it, and fuck Mercer. He's a bastard but I bet he's a beast in the sack, and I'll try anything once. Which leaves Maven with the short stick." Delvin toasted the air. "Alas, we hardly knew her, mostly because nobody wanted to." He took a drink to more laughter and applause.

"So now I ask someone, or Delvin has to ask me?" Rune said.

"You ask someone," Niruin confirmed.

Rune grinned. "Thrynn! Truth or dare?"

Thrynn glared at Rune. Clearly there was some history there. "Dare," he growled.

Rune blinked, like he hadn't expected this answer. "Oh. Uh... um.... Wade through the cistern and back?"

Thrynn fixed Rune with a flat look. Without changing his expression, he stood up, unbuckled his sword-belt and armor, set them down, and climbed over the railing. Grimly, he sloshed over to the other side of the room and back, then sat back down with an air of disdain. A couple people cheered for him, but most of them were snickering at Rune.

"That was awful," Vex said.

"I didn't have any good ideas, shut up," Rune sulked.

Cynric took pity on him. "What about these two?" he asked, indicating the only two non-Guild members in the room. "You, short one, truth or dare?"

"Drahff," the Breton supplied. "Ah...." He glanced around the room at all the anticipatory grins. "...Truth?"

"How come you're not part of the Guild?" Cynric asked promptly, sounding genuinely curious.

Drahff grimaced. "Horrible at bluffing. Kind of a job requirement."

"It is that," Vex said. "Hmm, Sam, truth or dare?"

Ooh, what to choose. Sanguine was tempted to pick dare, but this early on it probably wouldn't be anything interesting, so instead he said, "Truth."

Vex hesitated for just a second, which was a bit surprising in and of itself, but then she asked, "Did you really fuck Aringoth?"

"He _what,_" Delvin said, greatly amused.

Sanguine grinned. "Yep. You should ask something else, I'd have told you that for free."

Vex shook her head. "That's cold. At least when I break into someone's house I don't make them like me first."

"Eh, he's fine," Sanguine said. "Trust me." This netted him a lot of raised eyebrows but no actual objections.

Thrynn was up next. "Rune," he said.

"Uh-oh," Rune muttered.

Thrynn leaned forward like a cat waiting to pounce. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Rune said, sounding faintly terrified of what might happen if he picked dare.

Smugly and with great precision, Thrynn said, "How'd you lose your virginity?"

Sanguine smirked. This was starting to get good.

Rune ducked his head down and mumbled something.

"What's that?" Thrynn said innocently. "I couldn't hear you."

"You're a conniving bastard, you know that?" Rune snapped. "You already know."

Thrynn pretended to think. "Hmm. No, if it was me I think I'd remember it. You gonna use your pass already?"

Rune glared at Thrynn, face flaming. After a brief staring contest, he closed his eyes and admitted, "I paid Haelga."

Nearly everyone else in the room started whooping and jeering. "You're _that bad_ at chatting people up?" Vex gasped through her laughter.

"Yeah, yeah," Rune grumbled.

Lower, underneath the sound of the teasing, Sanguine heard Niruin say, "Is that where you learned it?" Rune's blush spread down his neck, and Cynric, on his other side, sobered quickly and uncomfortably. Hm. He'd keep an eye on that.

"All right, lay off him," Delvin said. "Lessee... Hewnon, was it? Truth or dare?"

Hewnon eyed Rune. "Dare," he said, then immediately and obviously regretted it when Delvin rubbed his hands together in glee and cackled.

"Ooh, what to pick, what to pick.... Propose marriage to that table. Like you mean it."

"What?" Hewnon said, amid the laughter.

"You heard me," Delvin said, eyes gleaming with mirth. "Go on. Make it want to say yes. Has to be believable or it doesn't count."

Drahff, so far the only one managing (barely) to not laugh at Hewnon's expense, clapped his hand over his mouth to muffle a snort. Hewnon shot him a look of disbelief, gave a long-suffering sigh, and walked over to kneel by one of the tables they'd taken out of the middle of the circle. Sanguine wolf-whistled at him. Hewnon made a rude gesture back, lips twitching.

He cleared his throat and waited for the laughter to die down. With a remarkably straight face, he laid a hand on the table's surface and gave it a loving look. Everyone else held their breath, waiting.

"Table," Hewnon said, and immediately burst into giggles.

"Keep going!" Delvin crowed.

"Table," Hewnon started again, voice wobbling wildly as he tried to keep from laughing, "you are my one t... true love. Will y-you do me the honor... of becoming..." He was starting to dissolve again. "...bec-coming... my table?"

"Fusozay!" Delvin said, lifting his bottle. Drahff had tears in his eyes, he was laughing so hard. Hewnon stood up, took a theatrical bow, and returned to his seat, clearly embarrassed but grinning all the same. "What's that mean?"

"'S Khajiit, something like 'have a good one.' Can't remember exactly."

"S-Sam," Drahff said, when he could get enough air to speak, "truth or dare?" He was still giggling drunkenly every few words.

Sanguine leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs out. "Truth," he said, interested to see where this would go. Drahff knew him well enough to know he didn't need to be dared to do anything.

"How old are you?" Drahff said casually, then froze like a deer sighting an archer.

"Older than you," Sanguine said, very calmly.

Drahff swallowed and nodded, no longer laughing.

"Oh, come on, that's not an answer," Thrynn said.

"Yes it is," Drahff said hastily. "Rude question anyway, let's just move on, Hewnon?"

"Great idea," said Hewnon, who had picked up on Drahff's suddenly tense posture and was looking for payback anyway. "Delvin. Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Delvin said, clearly not about to be played for a fool.

Hewnon matched Delvin's predatory grin from earlier. "What's something you wish didn't turn you on?"

A chorus of "ooooooh"s went up around the circle, including from Sanguine, who was quite happy to be plagiarized. Everyone looked at Delvin expectantly.

Delvin, for his part, wasn't looking so smug anymore. He swallowed, then, grudgingly, said, "When I kept my hair long I—liked having it played with." He scowled at the floor.

"Damn," Rune said. "That much?"

"Is that why you—" Niruin said, gesturing around his own head to indicate Delvin's baldness.

Delvin grimaced and nodded. "It got to be a... problem. Go on, get it over with, I know it's funny."

A few people were smirking, but nobody laughed outright. "'Funny' is not the word I'd use," Thrynn murmured. Delvin blinked at him.

"Drahff," Sanguine said, when no one moved. Drahff jumped in his seat but turned to look at Sanguine with no small degree of trepidation. "Truth or dare?"

Drahff was silent for a long moment. Sanguine met his eyes, and knew he was running over everything he'd ever seen Sanguine do, and remembering Mallus. "Dare?" he said tentatively.

Sanguine smiled at him gently. "Finish your drink."

Drahff looked down at the bottle in his hand as though it had suddenly turned into a snake.

"Kind of a dare is that?" someone muttered, but no one else answered or objected.

Drahff stared up at Sanguine, who kept smiling. Then he took a deep, fortifying breath and downed the remaining two-thirds of his ale without pause. When he was done he looked back at Sanguine. "You're very unsettling."

"Thank you," Sanguine said. "Niruin?"

"Wh—oh," Niruin said, realizing it was his turn again. "Er, ah, Cynric."

"Truth."

Distracted, Niruin tossed out, "Got a crush on anyone?" There were a few laughs, and had Cynric played along, he could easily have deflected the question with no one the wiser. Unfortunately for him, his eyes widened in alarm before he could control his expression, and every con artist in the room focused on him like slaughterfish tasting blood.

"Ooh," Delvin said, eager for someone else to take the heat, "this'll be good." 

Vex, curiously, didn't say anything, and looked remarkably sympathetic for someone who'd delighted in the previous squirming.

"Yes," Cynric said stiffly. He kept his eyes steadfastly on the floor.

When he didn't say anything else, Niruin prompted him. "Well, who is it?"

"That's not what you asked," Cynric said. Niruin opened his mouth to protest, but Rune, seeing how uncomfortable Cynric looked, elbowed him in the side to shut him up.

"Thrynn!" Rune said, a bit too loudly. "Truth or dare?"

"Ugh," Thrynn said, also slightly forced. "Fine, just ask, will you?"

Rune grinned. "So, _do_ bandits get real 'friendly' with the wildlife?"

Sanguine, confused, prodded Niruin for an explanation. Niruin leaned over and whispered, "He's asked some variation of that at least once a week for months now. Thrynn never gives him a straight answer, it's hilarious."

Present-day Thrynn rolled his eyes. "Of course not, you moron. Who wants to get kicked in the nuts by a deer? We just had sex with each oth—" He slammed his mouth shut, chagrined.

Rune's eyes lit with an unholy fire. "Oh, come on, details, details."

"I believe," Thrynn said with great dignity, "that that will cost you another question."

Niruin cackled. "Oh, excellent. This was a great idea."

"Thrynn, truth or dare?" Cynric said immediately.

Thrynn raised an eyebrow. "Dare," he drawled.

Cynric smirked. "Hey, Vex, do you still have those paints from the carnival job?"

Vex eyed him. "I do."

"Would you be willing to do up Thrynn in them?" Cynric asked sweetly.

Vex switched to appraising Thrynn. "I think I could work with that."

"Really?" Thrynn said. "Fine. None of the eye stuff, though, got a face full of it once and I couldn't see for a day."

"Deal," Cynric said, and the group took a short break while Vex went to go find the paints. When she returned, she crossed over to Thrynn and set a few pots and brushes on the table behind her. Quickly and expertly, she applied one color to his lips, another to his cheekbones, and a third to the lower half of his jaw, smudging the latter two so they formed a soft gradient that subtly altered his skin tone. By the time she was done, everyone had drifted back to their seats with fresh drinks. Vex collected hers from her chair before sitting back down.

Like any good thief, Vex had a light and steady hand. Thrynn glanced around the circle, at first confused. "Why is everyone looking at me like th... oh," he said, in sudden tones of recognition and not a little pride. "You thought it would look bad, didn't you?" He leered at Cynric, who shifted uncomfortably. "You like it."

"Yes," Sanguine said, partly to take the focus off Cynric, partly because it was true. He raked his eyes over Thrynn. "You look delicious."

Thrynn made a quiet noise of understanding. "So that's why they wear it," he said, and Vex nodded next to him.

"If it starts to itch, though, wash it off," she said, which successfully broke the tension. "Some people's skin doesn't like it. I think it's my turn, isn't it? Delvin."

"Truth," Delvin said easily.

Vex opened her mouth, stopped, and started again with a much less playful expression. "Why do you keep asking me out?" she said bluntly. "It hasn't worked, it isn't going to work, what about 'No, Delvin Mallory, I do not want to have dinner with you' makes you keep trying?!" Her voice had risen in frustration, and she ran a hand through her hair to rein herself in. "What on Nirn is going through your head?"

A split-second of genuine hurt flashed across Delvin's face before he hid it with a wink and a grin. "Well, figured it couldn't hurt to ask, could it?"

"Yes!" Vex exclaimed. "Yes, it does! I am sick of watching everything I say or do around you! It doesn't even matter if I don't sleep with you, because if you imply it enough, everyone will believe it! And then it'll be, 'oh, Vex only got where she is because she slept with the men at the top,' 'Vex is the Guild's pet slut,' and I'll have to start all over again because my reputation will be _gone!_ It's happened before!"

"Oh," Delvin said, looking sick. "No, I—no. That's not what I wanted, Vex, I—"

"It doesn't matter what you want," Vex said bitterly. "It doesn't matter what I want either. It's—look, never mind. Don't answer that, just skip my turn. Sorry."

There was silence.

"...I wouldn't think that," Cynric said quietly. When Vex looked up at him, he clarified, "You're a better thief than me, and I know it. I don't think anyone in the Guild doesn't."

Vex scoffed. "It's not the people who know me I'm worried about. If the Guild ever gets off the ground again, I'll need to sound good to people I've never met, who don't know a thing about me. It's hard enough being one of the only women here, I can't afford to be the one who spreads her legs for any bastard who winks at me."

"You hear anyone saying that," Delvin said roughly, "and I'll make sure they don't say it again. Or can't. Vex, I'm so sorry, I thought—I thought it was just a bit of fun, just banter, you know? That no one'd think you'd go with me, because you're—you're _better _than I am. You're a brilliant woman and an amazing thief and the best lockpick I've ever met, bar none. I'll never say another word about it, I swear on the Divines."

Vex leaned forward to scrub her face with both hands. "Okay," she said. "That's... okay. Okay."

"Think the Guild would fall apart without you," Thrynn said.

"You're the one who's always coming up with new ideas," Niruin put in.

"If it wasn't for you, we'd never have pulled off that Frostfall heist," Rune said.

"You're why I'm still here," Tonilia said quietly, from outside the circle.

Vex stared at them, and then suddenly sprang up from her chair, turning her back on the room and gripping the railing with white knuckles. "Keep—keep going," she said, voice trembling. She waved them on without turning around. "I'll be—right there."

Unanimously, they gave her space. "Um, Niruin," Thrynn said, a tad awkwardly.

"Dare," said Niruin. "You lot are boring, picking truth so much."

"Boring, huh?" Thrynn said, quickly warming to the challenge. "In that case...." He cast about and landed on Niruin's mostly-empty bottle of mead. "Show us how you'd suck a cock, with that."

The raucous laughter that followed lightened the mood considerably, but Niruin didn't blush or try to dodge. He just smiled slightly and waited until everyone quieted down, then gracefully slid to his knees on the floor and raised the bottle to his lips, swallowing the last few drops before circling his tongue around the opening.

The room was dead silent as Niruin tilted his head back and started to slide the first inch or so of the bottle in and out of his mouth. That silence meant every one of them could perfectly hear, or rather _not _hear, that his teeth never once clipped the edge of the glass. There was some uncomfortable shifting as the men in the room thought through the implications of that, and subsequently tried to hide its effect on them.

Niruin worked the bottle slightly deeper every time he pushed it back in, until he'd taken almost a third of it, up to the point where the neck stopped sloping and became a cylinder. Because of the shape, and the inflexible nature of the glass, he couldn't fit any more in his mouth, so instead he bobbed his head showily, keeping eye contact with Thrynn the whole time. Thrynn looked like he couldn't have looked away if he'd tried.

Vex had returned to the group by this point, and looked just as fascinated with Niruin's performance as with the reactions of everyone around her. Her eyes flicked over faces and laps, speculative, but she took her seat without saying anything.

Niruin pulled the bottle away leisurely, giving it one last lingering lick. He looked up at Thrynn from under his lashes. "Satisfied?"

Thrynn opened his mouth. No sound came out.

Niruin's eyes roved downward, to the bulge in Thrynn's wet pants. He smirked a bit and stood up to return to his chair, sated and smug.

A few moments went by while everyone collected themselves before Delvin said, somewhat unevenly, "Vex, truth or dare?"

"You can't dare me to have sex with you," Vex said immediately, but her tone wasn't angry or indignant. In the new, quiet tension, it sounded almost like a dare itself.

"No," Delvin agreed. "Kiss Sam."

Vex glanced at Sanguine. "Why him?" she said, barely making it a question.

"He's new," Delvin said. "Between you and him on any measure, it's you, no contest. He's in the Guild, so we can trust him that much, but none of us know him like we know each other." He looked over at Sanguine and his voice grew dry. "And I highly doubt he'll be unwilling."

"Hm." She stood up and crossed the circle to evaluate Sanguine. "What can I do to you?" she asked in an undertone.

Sanguine looked her in the eye. "Anything you want."

She held the stare, searching. Sanguine gave her the barest nod.

Vex bent at the waist and kissed him.

Sanguine yielded immediately. He tilted his head to give her access and kept his hands in his lap, letting her lead. There was little heat in the kiss, which Sanguine didn't mind; both of them knew what they were really doing was putting on a show. He kept his lips soft as she bared her teeth and gently, deliberately caught his lower lip between her incisors, slicing through the thin skin there.

Sanguine moaned, breathily and not entirely intentionally. Vex straightened and looked down at him with predatory dark pupils and an unreadable expression. Her mouth was smeared with blood. She turned and made sure everyone saw it before she licked her lips and stalked silently back to her seat.

Sanguine didn't pretend not to be affected. He leaned after Vex, as though drawn into her wake, and let the blood well uninhibited until the surface tension broke and it dripped down the side of his mouth. Then he smiled, slumped back in his chair, and wiped away the blood, healing the cut with a touch of Restoration as he did so. There. If that wasn't enough symbolism he didn't know what would be.

Everyone looked slightly dazed, especially Delvin, who blushed deeply and refused to look at Vex directly, as though she were a too-bright light that he nonetheless couldn't help but try to steal a glimpse of. Vex, Sanguine thought, looked very pleased indeed with this outcome.

"Delvin," Drahff said. His voice wasn't as rough as it could have been, but it certainly wasn't even, either. Delvin looked at him, slightly confused. "Truth or dare?"

There was a moment of hesitation then, a moment of acknowledgement that the game they'd been playing before had become a different sort of game entirely, a moment where the players glanced at each other and wondered, _Are we really going to do this?_ A few people shifted their weight. No one said anything, but a slow current of want drifted through the circle. Breathing changed. Eyes cleared. By the time Delvin said, "Dare," as though it was a request, the answer was a unanimous _Yes._

"Kiss Sam," Drahff said.

Delvin drew in a breath and looked to Sanguine sharply. "Oh," he said, and lurched drunkenly to his feet. He worried at his lower lip as he approached, probably without realizing it. "Guess you get that kiss after all, don't you?" he said.

"It's my lucky day," Sanguine said, and reached up and gently tugged him down.

Delvin was firmer than Vex had been, and Sanguine, intrigued, matched him for it. He was a good kisser, but when Sanguine gently ran his fingers over Delvin's scalp, he lost any control he'd been pretending at and moaned into Sanguine's mouth.

Sanguine very badly wanted to pull Delvin to him, settle him in his lap, and touch him until that choked, needy sound was the only noise he could make. But no. This was a long, delicate game, and he wanted even more to play it right. There was still a line there, between what was acceptable in public and what was not, and the harder they pushed that barrier without disregarding it entirely, the more it turned Sanguine on. Yes, he could easily have turned the game into an all-out orgy, but he wasn't entirely unaware of the benefits of delayed gratification, and certainly not of the allure of wanting something you thought you couldn't have.

He let Delvin go as gently as he'd reeled him in, steadying him until the man's eyes cleared and he remembered where he was. He flushed, realizing he'd gotten drawn into the kiss. Sanguine let his hand trail down Delvin's body, but hesitated when he reached Delvin's waist and deliberately veered away from his groin. Just close enough to insinuate, just far enough to tease.

Delvin exhaled deeply, once, but he didn’t say anything and he didn't try to hide his erection when he turned away. Now his glances at Vex were nearly shy, and his shoulders were half-hunched, trying to protect the unexpected vulnerability. Vex, for her part, was careful not to let her expression give away what she was thinking.

It was Hewnon's turn next, and he eyed the other players. "Cynric, was it?" he said quietly. "Truth or dare?"

Cynric paused. "...Dare," he said eventually, with a glance at Sanguine.

Hewnon had something different in mind, though. "Sit on the floor with your head in Rune's lap for the rest of the game."

Cynric froze, then glanced wildly at Rune, who gave Hewnon a skeptical look. "Is this a dare for him or me?" he said.

Hewnon smirked and said nothing, and Sanguine, with some surprise, realized that Hewnon was a lot more observant than he'd given him credit for. Then again, it wasn't like Sanguine himself was winning any awards in that department, so perhaps that was a low bar. He was definitely smarter than Drahff had given him credit for, though, and from the look on his face, Drahff was also just now realizing that. Heh. There'd be an interesting conversation.

Rune scoffed and turned back to Cynric. "All right, come—here? Is something wrong?"

Cynric stared, wide-eyed and obviously panicking. "No! I mean yes! I mean—I'm fine, this is fine!"

Rune gave him a concerned look. "Are you sure? You look a little—"

"Yep, all good here. Just a silly dare," Cynric said, and gave an obviously fake laugh that set half the room wincing.

"Is this how you act when the guards question you?" Niruin asked dryly. "If it is, I can't imagine how you don't spend most of your time in prison."

Cynric stood up. "Some of us make it a point not to get caught," he threw at Niruin, who just smirked and said, "Anymore," smugly. Cynric scoffed at him and turned to Rune. "How do you want me?"

Rune looked him up and down. Cynric swallowed hard and his forced levity vanished.

"In front of me. Kneel." When Cynric complied, Rune spread his legs so Cynric could sit between his calves. Cynric shuffled forward without prompting; Rune sank one hand into Cynric's hair and tipped his head onto his thigh, far enough from his groin that the position wasn't necessarily sexual. He pet Cynric's scalp with his thumb. "Okay?"

Cynric let out a long, shuddering sigh, and all of his tension seemed to go with it. He shut his eyes and leaned into Rune's leg. "Mhm."

"Looks like he's praying," Thrynn said, in what was probably meant to be a joking tone but came out hushed and almost reverent.

No one said anything. Rune stroked Cynric's hair before he regarded the rest of the circle calmly. "Whose turn is it, then?"

"Mine," Sanguine purred. Time to pull the heat off those two and let them simmer. They'd boil over on their own. Er, probably. Whatever, he wasn't the Prince of Cooking. "Hmm. Hewnon?"

Hewnon tilted his head at Sanguine. Contrary to the supposed nature of the game, he seemed to be trying to decide not which option would be the least humiliating, but which would be more interesting. Eventually, he said, "Truth," which was rather surprising in and of itself, given what he'd seen Sanguine do. On the other hand, maybe it wasn't.

Sanguine rolled a few ideas around like wine in his mouth. "What happened the first time you fucked Drahff?"

Drahff's breath audibly stuttered and his eyes went wide. He looked at Hewnon, pleading, but Sanguine hadn't missed the slight jerk of his hips—or the shocked lust that flooded him at the thought of strangers hearing the details. More than a bit of an exhibitionist streak, then.

"I haven't yet," Hewnon said. "Stone floor isn't that comfortable. And we were going to do it the other way around, at least the first time."

Sanguine rolled his eyes and one hand. "Fine, let me rephrase. What happened the first time you and Drahff had sex, as in, touched each other and at least one of you got off from it?"

Guilt flashed over Hewnon's face, and as with Cynric, everyone immediately took notice. Sanguine had been expecting something within the last few weeks, but it looked like the answer was much more interesting than that. To his credit, Hewnon didn’t try to deflect, just sighed and gave Drahff an apologetic look. "By that definition... it would've been a few years ago."

"What?" Drahff said blankly. "No it wasn’t, it was right after Sam gave us both—" He shut his mouth with a click.

"Blowjobs," Sanguine filled in cheerfully. "They had some shakedown going in the Ratway, the first time I came through. Didn’t feel like getting mugged, so I sucked 'em off instead."

"Only you would think that was the logical conclusion," Delvin said, shaking his head.

"It was the _fun_ conclusion," Sanguine corrected. "Hewnon?"

"...Right," Hewnon said, shooting Drahff another guilty look. "I guess I hid it well enough, then. You remember when we were in with the Halted Stream bandits?"

Drahff nodded, still mystified.

"I'd, ah, had a bit of a dry spell.... There wasn't much privacy in that camp, and it always seemed rude to, y'know, take care of it out in the open. We weren't really part of the group, not the way the rest of them were, so I figured it was only for a few months, I'd be fine. Anyway, there was a bit of a nook under the old dry waterfall, not really a cave, just about big enough for someone to stand in and the rest of the camp couldn't see you from a distance."

"Bet I know what that got used for," Thrynn said.

"Surprisingly, not that I saw," Drahff said. "They didn't bother." He smirked at Hewnon. "But I think I know where this story is going."

Hewnon cleared his throat, a blush rising up his neck to match Drahff's. "The day before, I'd pulled a muscle trying archery, and Drahff, he... um... offered to help me...." Multiple people snickered. Hewnon tried to look indignant rather than aroused and failed. "It wasn’t like that! Just a rubdown... Nine, that sounds even worse. Shut up. It was just in my shoulder, and I... I hadn't really been touched in a while, outside of fighting, and...." Hewnon quieted a bit as he went through the memory, and his demeanor changed from telling a bawdy story to sincerely recounting events as he'd lived them. He closed his eyes, either to aid in recollection or to keep from losing his nerve.

"It felt good," he said simply. "Just... being touched like that, trusting him so... openly. I never liked the other bandits, could never let my guard down around them, but Drahff was different. Is different. I—" Hewnon stopped, swallowed back what he'd been about to say, moved on. "But at the time I thought he wasn't interested, so I had to keep quiet—it's a good thing you were behind me," he added to Drahff with a wry glance, "or the guards would've heard us before they ever got to the camp."

Vex raised both eyebrows. "Guards?"

Hewnon chuckled. "Not what you were expecting, huh? Whole bunch of 'em came to clear us out, but someone shouted a warning—"

"Reja," Drahff supplied.

"—Reja, then, and I grabbed Drahff and hid us both in that little alcove while the rest of the idiots either made a run for it or tried their luck in combat. Only, we barely fit, so we're pressed up against each other, and I'm stuck between trying not to get seen and trying not to let Drahff figure out that I didn't have an extra knife." Scattered laughter, which Hewnon acknowledged with a rueful smile. "And we're both tense and desperately trying to stay quiet, and—mostly what I remember is his breath on my neck, how I couldn't stop imagining him going to his knees right there and putting his mouth on my cock, daring me to keep silent _now_—and then on top of all that, an arrow clipped the rock next to us, Drahff pulled me closer on reflex, and." He shrugged. "You can guess the rest. He never mentioned it so I thought he hadn't noticed, or put it together, or... something."

Drahff, meanwhile, had a hand over his mouth, his eyes wide in horrified mirth. "Oh, I—I noticed," he said. His voice was uneven and strangled, and for a second Sanguine thought he was disgusted, before realizing that he was trying desperately not to laugh. "You brushed up against me and I felt this little spot of—wet, and you looked so _ashamed_—"

"Oh, no," Hewnon groaned.

"I thought—I thought you'd pissed yourself, just a little—"

By now most of the circle was giggling mercilessly. Hewnon had one hand covering his bright red face.

"—and I didn't want to embarrass you, so I didn't say anything—"

"I wish you hadn't said anything now!" Hewnon cried, but he too was trying not to laugh. "No!"

"—but—you really...? Just from...." Drahff sobered, and looked a bit awed. "Just from me touching you?"

Hewnon ducked his head. "It'd been a while," he muttered.

Drahff shook his head. "I'm not making fun of you, just... why didn't you ever ask?"

"Like I said, thought you weren't interested." Hewnon shrugged. "In me, or men, or... anyone, actually. Kind of hinted at it when we first met, but you never took me up on it so I figured that was that and you'd let me know if you changed your mind."

"I... I'm not, really," Drahff said, faintly stunned. "Interested in.... Not like normal people are, it takes me—a long time, years sometimes. I didn't know. I guess I thought you were just being friendly. And then I didn't know how to...." He snorted. "I mean, what was I going to say, 'Hello yes you're my best friend and I think I'm in love with you, but for all I know saying so will ruin our friendship forever so if you don't feel the same please pretend nothing happened, but if you do would you like to try having sex and seeing where that goes?'"

Hewnon took a breath, then stopped with his mouth open. "That... would have done it, yes," he croaked. "Drahff—Drahff, come here." He held a hand out.

Suddenly nervous, Drahff eyed him, but took his hand and let himself be pulled until he was sitting on Hewnon's lap, their foreheads pressed together. Drahff was short enough that even with the six or so extra inches of height, he and Hewnon were about at eye level. Sanguine surreptitiously reinforced Hewnon's chair so it would handle far more than their combined weight. Slapstick was not what the moment called for, even if it would be funny.

"You love me?" Hewnon whispered. Sanguine wasn't sure if anyone else could hear him, but he and Drahff certainly could.

Drahff froze. "Yes?" he whispered back. He looked as though he wanted to apologize for it or soften the statement, but to his credit he didn't, just steeled himself. "...Do you?"

"I've loved you since the day we met," Hewnon breathed, and kissed Drahff fiercely. Awww. Sure, it was Mara's, but that didn't mean Sanguine wasn't allowed to think it was adorable.

When they broke apart, Drahff said, "I'm sorry it took me so long."

Hewnon immediately shook his head. "I don't care. We're here now."

"Speaking of poor communication," Niruin cut in. Drahff startled, having forgotten about their audience. He twisted to glare at Niruin, who ignored him blithely. "I believe it's my turn next. Cynric? Out with it."

All eyes went to Cynric, who wasn't facing most of the room but tensed at the scrutiny nonetheless.

"Aren't you supposed to ask him 'truth or dare?'" Sanguine muttered. Niruin waved a hand at him to shut him up.

Cynric heaved a tired sigh and glared briefly at Niruin before looking up at Rune. "I've had some kind of feelings for you for a while now. And I saw you kissing Niruin earlier today. And I'm probably supposed to be jealous or... something, but honestly it was one of the hottest things I've ever seen so I have no idea what's going on. Happy?" he added crankily to Niruin.

Rune blinked down at Cynric, utterly thrown. Cynric continued to look sour and embarrassed and wouldn’t meet his gaze. "Do you want to get up?" Rune asked after a pause.

"Please don't make me," Cynric blurted out, then immediately looked mortified. "I—sorry, that was—"

"Good," Rune said. He wound his fingers tighter in Cynric's hair, cutting off his hasty backpedaling. He regarded Cynric, eyes somewhere between sated and serious. "I have an idea. Do you want to know what it is first or do you want to trust me?"

"...Both?" Cynric tried. A few people muffled their amusement at the non-answer. 

Rune's lips twitched as well. "How about I give you a hint?" he said. "It involves Niruin and both of our turns." Cynric's eyes widened. "But first," Rune said, before he could interrupt, "I want you to show me how much you want it." He glanced downward significantly.

"Hey," Vekel said mildly. "Don't make a mess in my bar. Clothes stay on." A couple people jumped, having forgotten he was there. Contrary to his own rebuke, he had abandoned the pretense of work and was sitting on top of the counter, idly massaging himself with the heel of his hand as he watched them.

"Won't make a mess if he swallows," Thrynn said quietly.

Rune exhaled heavily and had to visibly struggle for a moment to keep himself in check. "That's... not quite what I meant," he said, somewhat reluctantly.

"What did you mean?" Niruin murmured.

"Keep your hands there," Rune said to Cynric. He guided him with light touches until Cynric was sitting over one of his feet, his groin pressed to Rune's shin. Cynric's breath stuttered when he realized Rune intended to leave him like that. "Good. Niruin? Truth or dare, pick dare."

Niruin snorted but obligingly said, "Dare."

Rune kept his eyes on Cynric. "This might be a lot, so we'll count it as my turn and Cynric's, if that's all right with him." Cynric nodded, as curious as everyone else. Rune's gaze flicked up to Niruin. "For the next ten minutes, you're going to do anything and everything Cynric tells you to. You're only allowed to touch me and him, and only if he says so."

Niruin's spine stiffened and he took a startled breath, but he didn’t object. After a moment he licked his lips and nodded.

"Cynric," Rune prompted quietly.

Cynric jolted out of his silent stare. "Ki...." he started, but his voice warbled and failed as he heard how loud the consonant was in the dead quiet. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Kiss him like he kissed you, this morning," he said to Niruin. "And let... let me see."

Niruin waited to make sure Cynric had finished speaking, then rose sinuously. "Gladly," he murmured. He eyed Rune, then stepped to the side so he stood at Rune's shoulder, forcing Rune to tip his head back to keep him in view. Niruin brought one hand up and gingerly traced Rune's cheekbone with the tips of his fingers. Rune's shoulders dropped and he let his eyes close, breath shuddering out of him.

Niruin didn't lean down immediately, like Sanguine thought he might. Instead, he simply continued to gently touch Rune's face, stroking its curves and slopes. With each pass, Rune relaxed more and more, until he was practically boneless. The hand that had been woven in Cynric's hair curled loosely over his shoulder and the top of his back, but it wasn't limp; Rune's fingers moved in small circles, unconsciously mirroring the patterns Niruin was tracing on his face.

Niruin paused, then let his fingers dip lower, smoothing over Rune's lips, chin, and throat. One of his hands crept around the back of Rune's neck into his hair, and the other he spread across the top of Rune's chest, preventing him from moving. Well, moving upwards; when he realized what Niruin was doing, Rune groaned and his hips jerked forward, surprising Cynric, who put his hands on Rune's thighs to steady him. It backfired, since Rune whined softly and immediately tilted his hips up again, but the idea had been to stop him from accidentally kicking Cynric, not to calm him down.

With Rune immobilized, Niruin finally bent down to kiss him, but it wasn't on the mouth; he brushed feather-light kisses across Rune's cheeks and jaw, everywhere he'd touched with his fingers. Rune made an unsteady noise of frustration and tried to reciprocate, but every time Niruin retreated just enough to deny him while keeping contact. Whatever else could be said about Rune, he was a quick learner; by the third time, he'd forced himself to stop moving, and was at once completely pliant and subtly shivering with the effort to remain so.

Niruin paused and drew back slightly to consider, then in one movement slid his hand up around Rune's throat and kissed him deeply.

Rune jerked like he'd been caught on the wrong end of a Staff of Lightning, and gave a half-groan, half-sob of shock and arousal. He'd gone from gently stroking Cynric's shoulder to clutching, white-knuckled, at the fabric of his shirt, and had clearly forgotten about anyone not currently touching him.

Moving slowly, Cynric reached forward and set his palm over Rune's crotch, where his erection was very apparent even through his clothes. He didn’t fondle or grab, just provided a slight pressure to give Rune some relief, which meant he was as surprised as everyone else when Rune whimpered plaintively into Niruin's mouth.

Cynric squeezed once, tentatively, and Rune's hips snapped forward and he tensed and shuddered for a long moment before collapsing back into his seat, and it took everyone, Sanguine included, another few seconds to realize he'd come.

"Fuck," said Delvin, which seemed to be the general consensus.

Niruin kept his hands on Rune but pulled back to let him catch his breath. Rune blinked at him slowly and started to smile down at Cynric, but halfway through his gaze caught on the rest of the room and his eyes started to widen in horror.

"Don't," Vex said. Everyone looked at her, but she ignored them, speaking directly to Rune. "Don't ruin it. It was good. You should... feel good."

Rune blinked at her, wide-eyed, and slowly relaxed again when no one contradicted her. Then he remembered his first thought and looked sheepishly down at Cynric. "Er... sorry."

"That was the sexiest thing that's ever happened to me, actual sex included," Cynric said honestly.

Rune exhaled sharply and lifted his gaze to Niruin. "You should make it up to him."

Niruin raised an eyebrow. "Make what up? Everyone got what they wanted, didn't they?"

Rune lifted his chin, somehow imperious even with the rest of his body lax from orgasm. "Suck his cock."

"I thought you couldn't dare someone to have sex with you," Tonilia remarked to Dirge.

He shrugged. "Technically he's not, he's daring him to have sex with someone else. And I don’t think anyone cares anymore." She laughed quietly.

Niruin smirked. "And how am I supposed to do that without taking his clothes off?"

"Won't make a mess if you swallow," Cynric said, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure this was actually happening to him.

Niruin looked down at him for a long moment, eyes dark. "True," he murmured. "You'd better make sure I do, then." He knelt gracefully.

While he arranged himself and Cynric on the floor, Vex decided to take her turn. "Hey, Thrynn. Tell us about the bandits."

Thrynn startled slightly, surprised at the attention, then looked his audience over and grinned. "What d'you want to hear about? We never formalized it or anything. You'd be trying to sleep listening to the man next to you jack off and you'd give him a hand just so he'd shut up." A few people snorted, amused.

"Ever happen to you?" Vex countered.

Thrynn licked his lips and put his hands on his spread knees, conspicuously not touching himself. "Now that you mention it.... Leader of that group, much as we had a leader, man name of Bjorn. Real Nord stereotype, built like a bear, didn't talk much, but he was probably at least forty, forty-five, so it was obvious he knew what he was doing."

He was interrupted by a gasp from Cynric, who now was leaning back against Rune's legs with his eyes closed while Niruin mouthed at his cock. Rune caught Thrynn's eye and nodded at him to keep going.

"...Wound up next to him one night. This was pretty early on so I was... twenty, maybe? Young enough I got hard at a strong breeze, you know." Most of the men listening chuckled in recognition. "Figured I'd just lie there until it went away. Didn't want to be the pervert jacking off in the middle of camp." Drahff snorted and Thrynn flashed him a smile. "I was new." He paused and his smile turned nostalgic. "It must have been so obvious. I thought I was doing such a good job hiding it, too. Tryin' so hard to stay still I was practically vibrating, no wonder Bjorn got sick of my shit. Just rolled on his side—"

A clatter snapped everyone's eyes and attention to the doorway. Framed within it was Brynjolf and a Dunmer woman Sanguine didn't recognize, both staring at the scene with their mouths open. The room went dead silent, and just as Brynjolf took a breath to speak, he was beaten to it by Cynric, who gave a low, rumbling moan as he clutched at Niruin's hair and came down his throat.

Everyone stared at the newcomers. Brynjolf and his friend stared back. Sanguine tried not to ruin the tension by bursting into laughter.

It was Brynjolf who eventually spoke, slowly and a bit oddly, as though he couldn't decide what emotion he was supposed to be having and had therefore gone with "all of the above."

_"What in Oblivion is going on here?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Fusozay Var Var" is one of the rules in the Ahzirr Traajijazeri, and translates to "Enjoy Life." I figured it worked well enough as a TES-flavored "Mazel tov!" Also, the language Khajiit speak is Ta'agra, not "Khajiit" but I figure it's good odds Delvin doesn't know that and/or doesn't care.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my patron ChaosMagic! Patrons get to vote on what I work on and can see some works-in-progress before they're posted.
> 
> For extra stuff and links to other places, I made a [Tumblr landing page!](https://fallowsthorn.tumblr.com)


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